By Philip Machanick
Some appear to be over-excited about the Section 154 intervention by Province. While an in intervention is long overdue, we must remind ourselves of the last intervention when Pam Yako was deployed as an administrator. Not only do we have nothing to show for her expensive sojourn in Makana, but things have since become worse. Province can by all means deploy an engineer here but if the fundamentals are not addressed, the result will be like applying a small plaster to a gaping wound.
Such an intervention will be a failure if community knowledge is not utilised. The legitimate MCF councillors in collaboration with other community stakeholders have built a growing amount of knowledge of the engineering, financial, skills and management challenges making the water system fail. An outside engineer who does not tap into this knowledge will start from scratch and could take months to get to the root causes. We therefore urge Province to have an open and inclusive process.
In October 2021, MCF launched its manifesto, which was a product of wide community consultation and application of the leadership’s knowledge of municipal systems. This is how an Integrated Development Plan is supposed to start out, unlike that of the municipality, where community consultation is superficial and there is no real analysis of how best to satisfy community needs. At our last Council meeting before being unlawfully removed as councillors, we convinced Council to agree to a workshop to revisit the deeply flawed copy-and-paste IDP and that the Municipal Manager should account in detail for every point in the Auditor General’s disclaimer. Once we were out of Council, neither of these steps was followed up. These were not MCF decisions, they were decisions of the whole Council.
Since then, the ghost councillors installed in our place have done nothing but vote with the ANC and the rest of the Council has been asleep at the wheel. Our water problems did not start a month ago. In February 2022, MCF’s legitimate leader Lungile Mxube wrote to the parliamentary portfolio committee chair and national Minister of Water and Sanitation to demand an intervention in both the corrupt mismanagement by Amatola Water Board of larger projects and the mismanagement by Makana municipality of water infrastructure. Despite follow-ups to these letters and articles in national media, nothing happened. Meanwhile, what was the rest of Council doing?
In our letters, we exposed fruitless and wasteful expenditure of R600-million on the James Kleynhans Water Treatment Works, where doubling the capacity is supposed to solve all our problems but never completes. Since February 2022, expenditure has further ballooned to over R700-million and there is no evidence, despite claims to the contrary, that output has doubled. We demanded a forensic audit of failed tenders and a skills audit of municipal water management.
Not only has the promised doubling of James Kleynhans not materialised but the water system today is in worse shape than it was during the drought when Settlers Dam ran dry. How can that be now the drought has broken? Something is very wrong in the state of Makana water management.
MCF’s legitimate councillors have not been sitting idle despite having no income and no presence in Councill.
One 21 March 2021, MCF launched a people’s water rights signature campaign targeting 20,000 signatures to petition the national minister to intervene. This campaign gives us a basis for an intervention in the High Court if there is no response. We have also complained about the dire water situation to the Human Rights Commission, who are working on a case.
In addition to water, we have taken on a number of issues and projects to implement our manifesto.
Before we were even sworn in to Council, we objected to ludicrously short notice given for a compulsory briefing for a project to build a shopping centre in Joza. When the ANC discovered they did not have a majority in the District Council, they attempted to unlawfully rerun the election of the Council District representatives. We orchestrated a united opposition vote against this and served a stern letter from our legal representatives that put a stop to this illegal shenanigan.
We have been working hard to make a reality our call that locals should be employed as first preference in government contracts (“the cows of Makana should eat the grass of Makana”). That applies to all skill levels including professionals. Why does the municipality use expensive out of town legal representatives?
An important part of local preference is promoting skills development in the community so that work will be done competently. We are also promoting skills development in the municipal workforce to reduce failures and unnecessary costs. For example, the municipality is paying hundreds of thousands of rand per month for a contractor to run the municipal tip. This started after the previous mayor and MM were under threat of contempt arising from a 2015 High Court judgment forcing them to bring the tip up to code. But that was nearly ten years ago: why has there been no effort to upskill municipal staff to be able to take back this function?
Another big issue is poor skills in running infrastructure. Water pumps should last at least 15 years if properly used and maintained yet replacing pumps at R2-million plus each is a regular budget item and has led to allegations of serious corruption. Now the drought has broken, we should have water supply as reliable as before the drought of 2017–2019, yet our water infrastructure remains chaotic.
MCF’s legitimate leadership is working on a number of training and skills development initiatives; once we are back in council, we will push these even harder.
Besides skills, another issue is nepotism and cronyism. We already know how deep that can run from the Kabuso Report, which has yet to result in consequences. We also know about ghost workers, exposed particularly by the late Jeff Budaza, whose death remains in vain as long as corruption and incompetence carry on unabated. There is also the suspicious trend of managers and directors being appointed from outside Makana who favour dodgy contractors from their past.
We are also working on causes of delays in building RDP houses, suspicious occupation of RDP houses to people they were not allocated to, delays in eliminating bucket toilets, and rescuing abandoned government buildings from vandals and looters. We are also concerned with food security and are investigating options in that area.
Another huge problem is a de facto investment strike. Who is going to invest in job creation in a filthy city with crumbling infrastructure? Yet despite this, we are working on initiatives to bring renewable energy projects to Makana and to build township and rural tourism. We plan on working with other leaders such as National Arts Festival to make these initiatives successful. For example: we need to address the underlying reasons for out-of-town visitors and artists staying in Port Alfred rather than using township homestays.
This is a municipality with no financial controls and no effective management of resources. It staggers between rampant abuse of overtime and overtime bans that result in service delivery failure. The latest excuse is the claim that the municipality had a choice between paying Eskom and paying overtime. This is ridiculous. In 2019, a High Court action enforced a settlement between Eskom and Makana Municipality to pay off the municipality’s long-term debt. If the municipality had adhered to the agreement, there would be no problem today.
Finally, I ask what the rest of Council has been doing since we were illegitimately replaced by ghost councillors.
Aside from the portfolio committees covering areas like infrastructure and finance, the Municipal Public Accounts Committee is a forum for calling management to account for financial irregularities. Section 32 of the Municipal Finance Management Act allows for recovery of fruitless, wasteful and irregular expenditure from political and administrative leadership. After such a long series of audit disclaimers, where are the Council resolutions emanating from MPAC demanding repayment of such expenditure in terms of MFMA?
Councillors have powers of oversight. Where is the evidence that they have been to any major municipal facility and demanded logbooks – to take just one example – showing that equipment and vehicles are properly used and maintained, with a verifiable paper trail? One of our civic partners has used the Promotion of Access to Information Act to demand information about all eight pumps at the two main water pump stations. After more than a year of ignoring PAIA requests and High Court judgments enforcing compliance, even under threat of jail for contempt, the MM has not been able to give a full accounting for where every pump is. A civic organisation with no council seats can pressure the municipality like this. So what are the councillors doing? They are being paid to do this job. Residents can rest assured that when the legitimate MCF councillors are back on portfolio committees and MPAC, we will not let such matters rest.
The steps taken to remove us should have been questioned by the Council as a whole because they were clearly illegitimate. The municipality now faces a bill of R4-million for backpay and other damages. Instead of implementing the 13 May 2024 judgment that undid our illegitimate removal, the municipality continued to pay and recognize the ghost councillors. As a result, we have an even bigger claim for damages and a solid case to overturn the budget passed by the illegal Special Council meeting of 30 May 2024. While we do not expect political support from politicians whose main aim is to win votes for themselves, we do expect principled support against unlawful actions that not only undermine democracy but that also impose major wasteful costs on a strained fiscus. Yet we see no evidence of questions or motions in Council demanding that the MM and Speaker account for their actions.
MCF’s fundamental goal is a liveable, sustainable municipality that systemically and systematically addresses the root causes of hunger, joblessness, homelessness and hopelessness.
Once legitimate MCF councillors are back in their seats, you can be sure that there will be fireworks. We dare not fail our city and our residents.
Philip Machanick is the MCF Chief Whip and Member of the Finance Portfolio Committee
