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Recently, the Democratic Alliance (DA) wrote to Mpumalanga CoGTA MEC Mandla Msibi to place Govan Mbeki local municipality under Administration as they are cash strapped and struggling to deliver services to residents. The DA has succeeded in doing so.

We are happy to announce that MEC Msibi listened to our call and Govan Mbeki municipality was placed under administration as from 28 October 2020. This is a victory to the DA and the people of that municipality.

In addition to this the Mayor resigned on Wednesday and the executive according to the Structures Act, will also be dissolved. So, they have no Mayor and no executive. This made it easy to convince CoGTA to approve the call for administration.

For years, Govan Mbeki municipality has been experiencing serious and uncontrollable sewage spills so much that the DA reported them to the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) and the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) in 2017. But since then, nothing has been fixed, instead money meant to fix issues like sewage spillage and water provision was recently diverted to pay Eskom whom they owe over R2 Billion.

The DA thus calls on MEC Msibi to deal with the issues of financial management in Govan Mbeki now that the municipality is under his administration. MEC Msibi must also try to strengthen revenue generation and improve billing systems.

The DA will not stop with this victory; but we will still persuade MEC Msibi to dissolve Council and appoint Administrators in four other Mpumalanga municipalities that are not financially viable. These are eMalahleni, Thaba Chweu, Lekwa and the City of Mbombela.

All the above local municipalities have failed to deal with both aspects of revenue streams; namely, revenue generation strategies and creditor repayment. However, despite being adopted and implemented by local councils, the situations in Emalahleni and Govan Mbeki local municipalities worsened whilst being under a provincial intervention because of lack of political will. To date, Thaba Chweu, Lekwa and the City of Mbombela are not doing any better either.

Looking at Emalahleni, at the end of December 2018 Eskom was owed R2.3 billion and the municipality was owed R3.8 billion by consumer debtors. Despite being under the provincial intervention, these amounts increased substantially in the space of one year to owing Eskom R3.5 billion and owed R4.6 billion by consumers for services at the end of December 2019.

Using the analogies above, it is clear that action is needed in these municipalities and that by waiting we are only worsening the financial crisis in these municipalities.

The DA calls on Msibi to urgently place these non-viable municipalities under administration in terms of Section 139 (5) (b) of the South African Constitution. Failing to do so will to lead to a complete breakdown of service delivery in the affected municipalities.

Issued by The DA