When President Thabo Mbeki visits the Vaal region next week, he will find the area in a state of collapse, with politicians turning on each other, Iscor having shed 20 000 jobs and residents threatening a repeat of the 1984 Lekoa/Vaal uprising against their councillors.
The latest in a series of high turn-over of mayors and municipal managers, is the termination of the contract of Emfuleni local municipal manager Ndhlabole Shongwe with an accom-panying handshake of an estimated R1-million.
Shongwe was suspended in February after he exposed alleged corruption that led to the arrest of 30 officials and the recent arrest of a councillor and the municipality’s chief operating officer.
Stan de Klerk, who was appointed to assist the council while Shongwe was on suspension, was also suspended last month — raising suggestions that the council was victimising whistle-blowers. De Klerk alleges he was suspended because he was uncovering more corruption, but the council has accused him of irregularities in his work.
In another series of events in the region, the Vaal district municipality, Sedibeng, now has Mlungisi Hlongwane — the controversial South African National Civics Organisation (Sanco) president — as its mayor, while the local municipality, Emfuleni, is headed by Peter Skosana, former Gauteng minister of social welfare.
The two were appointed in April after the African National Congress removed former Emfuleni mayor Johnny Thabane for poor performance after the ANC said it was concerned about the level of deterioration of the council’s ability to continue serving the people.
The Vaal region has one of the highest unemployment figures in Gauteng and has suffered after local economic giant Iscor retrenched about 20 000 people in the past three years.
In a march last month against poor service delivery, residents warned that their patience was running out. They threatened more mass action and said once it explodes, it will be difficult to contain.
The Vaal was the first area to rebel against the imposed and unaccountable apartheid local authorities. It was also the first to heed a call by the United Democratic Front to make the country ungovernable and residents killed councillors and burned their properties in frustration.
Former Pan Africanist Congress secretary Thami ka Plaatjie, who lives in the area, says he remembers some of the people who marched last month as being among those who took to the streets in 1984. ”The people here are very patient, but once they rise up, it will be the biggest and nastiest explosion seen in a long time,” he added.
Shongwe last year questioned why the council’s mayoral committee was planning to grant a security company a R4-million contract when only R700 000 had been made available by the provincial government for that purpose.
He also suspected that the security company could have been unduly favoured as it submitted a quotation to the council on the same day the council took a decision to open the tender.
In February, Shongwe was suspended for failing to submit a proper annual statement. Council spokesperson Aviva Manqa said Shongwe was not charged while on suspension for eight months. He said the council stopped investigating charges against the municipal manager after he took the matter to the bargaining council. ”Once he did that, the council felt that the employer-employee relationship had broken down and it was best to agree on a settlement,” Manqa said.