According to the report, new eThekwini mayor Cyril Xaba has been supportive of the Section 154 team. Photo: City of eThekwini
A progress report from a governance expert tasked with recommending a turnaround plan for the embattled eThekwini municipality has confirmed what myriad other reports, ratepayers and businesses have been saying for decades — that KwaZulu-Natal’s only metro is weak on accountability, low on competence and high on corruption.
The municipality was also “very selective in information being provided” to the governance experts, according to the report.
The report was authored by former city manager Mike Sutcliffe who, along with Cassius Lubisi, is leading the section 154 technical support team at the municipality.
In the progress report, Sutcliffe said there was a lack of transparency from the municipality when it came to sharing information and financial disbursements with the team.
There was also poor responsiveness to communities of interest, poor competency levels and non-compliance with municipal staffing regulations, corruption and serious problems with supply chain management processes, poor accountability and poor consequence management.
Sutcliffe said the city manager had also refused the team’s first round of requests for information “with claims that it is confidential subject to the Popi [Protection of Personal Information] Act even though none of the information requested personal details in confidential areas”.
The refusal had been brought to the attention of the mayor, the speaker and the department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs, he said.
The municipality had not met its deadline for information sought and only “around 40%” of it was provided by 18 July, according to the report, which was written in August.
Contrary to this, the team had a “very significant and supportive meeting” with new mayor Cyril Xaba, said Sutcliffe, and had also enjoyed “significant and positive support from business, municipal officials, civic organisations and the like, who are also assisting with the information for the diagnostic report”.
eThekwini refused to answer questions about the intervention, including whether the municipal manager had finally given the team access to the information it sought, telling the Mail & Guardian: “The municipality is not able to respond [to] your questions regarding the section 154 support because the support was not initiated or implemented by the municipality.”
The provincial cooperative governance department also did not respond to the M&G’s questions on whether the information sought by the team had been provided.
The section 154 team — initiated by Cogta — is one of two teams tasked with capacitating KwaZulu-Natal’s only metro so that it can sort out its affairs. The other is the Presidential eThekwini Working Group.
According to the progress report, the section 154 team is focusing on “determining root and other causes of the challenges facing the municipality in order to assist eThekwini to manage its own affairs and to perform its functions….” This will be done through a diagnostic report, which will be used to determine a turnaround strategy.
The team is limited in what it can do to right the metro, with support and advice being key to its terms of reference.
The full implementation of its recommendations will lie with the municipality, which under successive mayors has brushed aside such advice and continues to run eThekwini to the benefit of individuals and the governing party, as has been well documented.
The presidential team’s focus is on intergovernmental support for the metro.
But in the report Sutcliffe said that “persons within eThekwini” had sent a copy of a letter from Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana to the city manager, speaker and mayor in which he said “essentially, that the section 154 process is a duplication of efforts” being undertaken by the team appointed by the president. Sutcliffe said a response had been prepared for Godongwana in this regard.
Having both teams assist in the righting of the municipality has avoided a more debilitating section 139 intervention, which would have effectively seen the metro being labelled as dysfunctional and in need of administration.
President Cyril Ramaphosa established the eThekwini Working Group in February after myriad complaints from members of the Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry — which represents well over 3 000 formal businesses and 54 000 informal traders — as well as ratepayers associations, civil society and organised labour.
That team is led by former MEC and former deputy ANC KwaZulu-Natal chairperson Mike Mabuyakhulu, and is expected to assist the municipality for two years.
Talk about a serious intervention in the metro has been ongoing for years, but was consistently scuppered by the then dominant ANC in the municipality and province, which also rejected those tentatively chosen to lead the section 154 intervention — Sutcliffe, former director general in the presidency Lubisi and the Moses Kotane Institute’s Thandeka Ellinson, who is no longer part of the team.
Opposition parties were at the same time calling for a section 139 intervention.
A compromise was finally reached when the opposition settled on the section 154 intervention, proposed by the ANC, but again, there was little to no movement.
In June, after a power-sharing agreement was finalised in the province following the ANC’s loss of its majority in the May general elections, KwaZulu-Natal’s new cooperative governance MEC, the Inkatha Freedom Party’s Thulasizwe Buthelezi, said the section 154 intervention would go ahead. He said Sutcliffe and Lubisi had been appointed as the governance experts to lead the process.
Overall findings
In the preliminary report’s overall findings, Sutcliffe said the metro had “very poor relationships” with its residents and ratepayers. Instead of eThekwini using the communities as resources to encourage and build good governance, they had to “confront the state, go to court etc” to get results.
He also said there was a “worrying theme” of non-compliance and competency levels when it came to employment of officials and contractors, and the assignment of persons acting positions.
DIfficulties had also arisen from the “many serious allegations of corruption identified in the municipality”, Sutcliffe said. Eight officials in the city’s water unit had been killed, and those placed in acting appointments were “individuals alleged to have been involved in acts of corruption, maladministration etc”.
Accountability and consequence management was a “major area” needing “advice and support” he said, adding that all investigation and disciplinary recommendations “must be prioritised without fear or favour”.
Under the preliminary report’s basic service delivery breakdown, Sutcliffe found the following in the metro’s units:
- Customer management was poor, the capital to operational ratio was “very poor”, asset management was weak and asset creation was poor.
- The human settlements unit was weak despite there being significant resources available.
- Under the bullet point engineering, Sutcliffe simply wrote: “Competency, competency, competency!”
- As far as transport, the unit was weak and there was a waste of resources “on fragmented infrastructure such as buses, IT, infrastructure etc, and poor relationships”.
- There was poor management of by-law enforcement from metro police, and better integration was needed in disaster management.
- The city’s parks, recreation and cemeteries and culture unit had poor support and “weak management”.
- There was also poor mainstreaming when it came to climate change, and “overall, very little community and private sector relationships”.
Most worrying, he said, was how many times eThekwini had been reported negatively in the Auditor-General’s national integrated report on audit outcomes for the 2021-22 financial year. Examples of this were fraud, poor performance targeting, lack of complete or accurate information, non-achievement of targets, poor commissioning projects and poor repairs and maintenance.
Sutcliffe said turnaround strategies would require evidence-based monitoring and evaluation, and responsiveness to communities of interest.
Competence levels and non-compliance would need to be addressed, urgent action would need to be taken against allegations of corruption and poor supply chain management, and there would need to be accountability and consequence management processes put in place.