Service delivery in one of the Eastern Cape’s largest municipalities has been paralysed by a scramble for power among councillors, prompting the intervention of the African National Congress’s provincial structures.
If disciplinary procedures instituted by the provincial ANC fail to arrest the growing crisis in the municipality, Luthuli House will be asked to step in.
Mnquma Local Municipality, incorporating Butterworth, Kentani and Nqamakwe, has a budget of R111million, the fifth largest of 38 local councils in the Eastern Cape. It has been brought to a standstill by infighting among councillors elected in the March 1 local election.
Fuelling the divisions is the ongoing power struggle in the province between senior party leaders Deputy Defence Minister Mluleki George and Makhenkesi Stofile, Minister of Sports and the ANC chairperson in the Eastern Cape.
Sipho Mengezeleli, director of strategic planning in Mnquma and acting municipal manager since last August, has sent a 22-page political report on the divisions to the ANC provincial executive committee and ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe, requesting their intervention.
Mengezeleli said the councillors vying for power ”are doing this because it is believed that they have the assurance that at a national level they are favoured by certain key individuals within the ANC’s national executive committee, who will be willing to defend and accept their appeals”.
George is chairperson of the ANC’s Amathole region, which incorporates Mnquma municipality and has one of the biggest party support bases in the Eastern Cape, with 17 000 members.
Control of Amathole and the OR Tambo region, which has 25 000 members and is dominated by Stofile, is crucial in power-broking ahead of the ANC’s national conference next year, as the regions could swing the provincial vote in the presidential succession race.
Mengezeleli’s report has prompted the intervention of the ANC’s provincial executive committee. Last week a parliamentary task team, led by chairperson of the local government committee in the Eastern Cape legislature, Lulamine Nazo, led a ”fact-finding mission” to Mnquma. ”We are very concerned,” said Nazo. ”It seems service delivery is at a total standstill because of the infighting.”
Mnquma was one of seven Eastern Cape councils where councillors defied provincial nominations before the local elections, choosing their own mayoral candidates.
Former executive mayor Mbulelo Ntenjwa was re-elected instead of Nomalindo Dyantyi, the choice of the ANC’s provincial deployment committee in Mnquma. Ntenjwa, in turn, flouted council regulations by reappointing Ngamela Pakade as municipal manager. The council suspended and brought disciplinary action against Pakade last July after he allegedly defrauded it of R1million by manipulating increases and bonuses.
Pakade was arrested by the Scorpions in November last year and was due to appear in court on June 5, but the case was postponed. Despite a prosecutor’s order in the council’s disciplinary process that Pakade be dismissed — a binding decision in terms of South African Local Government Association regulations — he remains municipal manager. This has left Mengezeleli, legitimately appointed acting municipal manager pending the outcome of case against Pakade, on the sidelines.
This week concerned residents of Mnquma, represented by the South African National Civic Organisation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party, said they would launch legal action against the council over Pakade’s continued employment.
Ntenjwa, widely seen as a George loyalist, resigned from his ”self-imposed” position as mayor in April after pressure from the ANC’s provincial executive committee. But instead of electing the province’s preferred candidate, Dyantyi, the council appointed another councillor, Mabona Duna, also a George loyalist. Duna is currently executive mayor.
ANC provincial spokesperson Mahlu-bandile Qwase said the provincial executive committee had brought disciplinary action against Duna and councillors who supported his nomination. If he appealed, Luthuli House would intervene, said Qwase.