eThekwini mayor Mxolisi Kaunda. (Photo by Gallo Images/Darren Stewart)
The section 154 intervention into the eThekwini metropolitan council appears to be finally getting underway after nearly a month of uncertainty about the role the team appointed by provincial government will play in stabilising its finances and administration.
The provincial cooperative governance and traditional affairs MEC, Bongi Sithole-Moloi, is scheduled to meet the eThekwini council on Friday to brief them about the intervention.
While the three-person team of former city manager Mike Sutcliffe, former director general in the presidency Cassius Lubisi and Moses Kotane Institute director Thandeka Ellinson are understood to have met, the province, city and the national department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs have been silent about the nature and lifespan of the intervention.
Although the intervention has been made by the provincial department, its officials have referred the Mail & Guardian to Cooperative Governance Minister Thembi Nkadimeng’s office for clarity regarding the terms of reference of the intervention.
The municipality lost a R100 million urban settlements development grant, designated for housing, and a R122 million neighbourhood development grant from the department of human settlements earlier this year.
The loss of the grants, along with infighting over the appointment of municipal manager Musa Mbhele and other key officials, as well as spiralling expenditure in the city’s expanded public works programme, sparked the intervention, which was requested by the ANC leadership in the province.
The section 154 intervention puts in place a support team to assist a floundering municipality, but leaves the council in place and falls short of the section 139 intervention normally used by the cooperative governance department in dysfunctional municipalities.
Opposition parties in the city had called for the department to dissolve the council and place eThekwini under administration, but have accepted the section 154 intervention as a step towards guiding the metro out of an administrative and financial quagmire.
On Thursday, Tsekiso Machike, spokesperson for Nkadimeng, said they were “aware” that the province had invoked section 154 of the Constitution and would brief the city on Friday.
“It is in that meeting that the province will officially inform the metro about the support plan. The minister will wait in anticipation for the province to brief her after this process,” Machike said.
The intervention comes at a time when eThekwini continues to battle with service delivery and with rebuilding infrastructure damaged in the 2021 riots and last year’s floods, and with its finances.
According to the auditor general’s consolidated report on municipalities, released on Wednesday, eThekwini maintained its unqualified with findings status.
The city incurred R4.8 billion in irregular expenditure and a further R48.3 million in fruitless and wasteful expenditure during 2021-22, consistent with its performance over the past three financial years.
The section 154 intervention is in part aimed at identifying blockages in financial oversight and controls, along with problems in human resources consequence management, but its terms of reference are yet to be made public.
They are understood to provide assistance in areas including governance, service delivery, planning and financial management. They would also be tasked with identifying blockages regarding disciplinary processes and to ensure that grants allocated by national and provincial governments were spent.
A source close to the process said the team had already started work, with initial meetings being held towards drafting a diagnostic report regarding the key problems the city faced and how they could be solved.
But they needed to have a “political introduction” to the councillors and officials before the process could get off the ground in earnest to prevent pushback from within the council to their attempts to turn its functioning around.
The terms of reference were expected to be finalised ahead of the intervention team meeting councillors and officials.
Mayor Mxolisi Kaunda made no mention of the intervention in his post budget media briefing on Thursday, while city spokespersons referred the M&G to the provincial cooperative governance department for comment.
Kaunda said that investigations into allegations linked to the city manager and deputies would be presented to council within seven days.
Cooperative governance spokesperson Siboniso Mngadi said there had been “some delays on the issue of eThekwini”.
“This directive came from the national department. Lubisi is not here in KwaZulu-Natal, so some issues can be addressed by the national department,” Mngadi said.