Tshwane: Worst-performing municipality in the country

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The interview starts at the 8:03 mark.

JEREMY MAGGS: Alright, let’s get our teeth now into the hurly-burly of metro politics. In a tough statement from the Parliamentary Select Committee on Cooperative Governance, Traditional Affairs, Water and Sanitation, as well as Human Settlements, it says it’s of the view that a lack of financial management within the City of Tshwane requires urgent attention.

The statement goes on to say, the risk to achieving success is a lack of capacity and skills, particularly in strategic roles within the city. Well, let’s start our coverage now as we talk to China Dodovu, who sits on the committee, and welcome. First up, can you explain what you mean about a lack of appetite for effective consequence management? Your words.

CHINA DODOVU: Firstly, local government is in a crisis. There are a lot of problems within the sphere of government, ranging from political issues, governance, service delivery, financial management, and viability, as well as administrative blockages. All of these impede the successful implementation of the programmes of local government and, therefore, they must be resolved, and the leadership must come forward. Local government leadership must resolve this, and it will seem that there is no appetite to resolve these particular questions, which exacerbates the crisis that you have within local government.

JEREMY MAGGS: Do you think the situation is worse in Tshwane?

CHINA DODOVU: Yes, Tshwane is the worst metro municipality in the country at the moment. We’ve got eight, and we’ve made an analysis of all the metropolitan municipalities in the whole country, and Tshwane tends to be the worst-performing municipality in terms of financial management, in terms of service delivery, in terms of managing the political tensions and the coalition dynamics within the municipality itself.

It’s not me who’s saying that; the Auditor-General has said this in so many respects. The financial situation of the municipality has deteriorated.

The municipality is owing Eskom, Rand Water, and other creditors over R4 billion.

They received a more adverse audit opinion than any other metropolitan municipality. They are in debt. They have adopted what is called an unfunded budget, which means the budget that they have is not backed up by the necessary funding. They are under collecting revenue and all of this exacerbates the problem that Tshwane is having. For me, this is very, very concerning and it has got to be attended to.

JEREMY MAGGS: Mr Dodovu, when you raised these issues, these concerns with the metro, what answers did you get and were you satisfied with them?

CHINA DODOVU: We received a lot of answers. What is saddening about this whole issue is that they are on a defensive mode. They try to explain the reasons why this and that has not happened. They try to show us their willingness to change the situation, but that doesn’t resolve the problem because the fact of the matter is that there is a water problem in Hammanskraal. We all know that there are problems of illegal settlements, the proliferation of illegal settlements within the area. They do not spend the money of housing.

Read: Capital expenditure in metros sorely lacking

Recently we visited Tshwane as part of the Select Committee of Parliament, and it would seem that there is no appetite to deal with the issues at hand, this is concerning. Jeremy, Tshwane is our capital city. It has got to lead by example and show the country and the whole world that things are happening in our own capital, and that is not the case because these councillors that you have, the 15 political parties that you have in Tshwane, they spend all the time fighting among themselves. They’re showing us every day of their lives how they can fight and battle, and at the end of the day, who suffers? The people suffer the most, service delivery suffers the most, infrastructure development suffers the most because they pay little attention to those particular issues.

JEREMY MAGGS: Mr Dodovu, let me ask you then, what specific actions are the Select Committee recommending then to improve financial management within the metro?

CHINA DODOVU: We have said produce what is called a post-audit action plan. This post-audit action plan will speak to specific steps that I’m going to share with you, specific steps that they need to do to address the problems that were raised by the Auditor-General. For example, the Auditor-General has raised issues around unauthorised expenditure, which means that they spend the money that they don’t have, irregular expenditure is skyrocketing.

Listen: Only 14.5% of municipalities obtained a clean audit – AG report

The irregular expenditure means that in the course of implementing the project, the programmes and spending money, they do that violating their own policies and bylaws, and this is concerning. But the Auditor-General also said there is wasteful and fruitless expenditure, which means the money that they spend is in vain and they need to put up the necessary systems to ensure that they correct that particular situation.

JEREMY MAGGS: China Dodovu, I’m going to leave it there and thank you very much indeed. Alright, listening to that conversation and responding to it is the Mayor of Tshwane, Cilliers Brink, a very warm welcome to you. So you’ve heard what the select committee says, worst performing municipality in the country. You’re on the defensive and there’s too much fighting among political parties. How do you respond to that?

CILLIERS BRINK: Jeremy, nobody is in denial about Tshwane’s financial position and the seriousness of the findings of the Auditor-General. In fact, we have focused on very few other issues than trying to respond to those findings and to try and get control of the city’s finances.

On Friday, a full presentation was done by myself, members of the Mayoral Committee, as well as the city manager, outlining the action steps we’ve undertaken, including a budget presented to the municipal council passed by a large majority. Yes, it is not funded, but it is accompanied by a funding plan, which National Treasury has approved. We are advertising all of the Section 56 positions in the city and are in the process of filling them. That will give critical stability and control that was lost in the past.

We are reducing the accumulated figure of irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure. In fact, the last council meeting of the previous financial year, the last council meeting of June, almost R10 billion of accumulated irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure was dealt with.

So the Select Committee was given this detail and questions answered.

By the statements made by the Honourable Dodovu, I think he was perhaps twiddling his thumbs while we were having this particular meeting. It seems to be that he just wants to go on a political tirade. Now, one important issue, Jeremy, that one has to remember is that part of the reason Tshwane has financial difficulties is because in 2020, the city was placed under unlawful administration. The municipal council was dissolved, and for seven months there was no oversight over expenditure, over recruitment, over supply chain management, over revenue.

Read: City of Tshwane ‘at risk of being placed under administration’

One of the persons who voted for that unlawful administration was the Honourable Dodovu. So he clearly has zero reflection of his own role in Tshwane’s difficulties. That was also evident from Friday’s meeting. But the essence of it is we are working really hard to fix the mess in Tshwane, including the mess that the Honourable Dodovu contributed to in the city.

JEREMY MAGGS: So there’s a plan in place, but you say that there is a funding plan, but there’s no funding. What sort of numbers are you attaching around this, and ultimately, where is that money going to come from?

CILLIERS BRINK: So the funding plan gives particular details about how we want to save money as well as generate additional money. That includes measures such as not granting salary increases to councillors and officials, going to the Bargaining Council to get exemption from that. That’s a difficult decision. That is a decision that comes with a risk, and that’s what leadership is about. We’re making that decision and that’s going to save us about R600 million.

The other focus areas are reducing non-revenue, water and electricity by attending to leaks, by attending to metering, making sure that we collect what is owed to the city.

All of those measures are canvased in detail in the funding plan, and this was presented to the select committee.

Now as to what our objectives are, it is clearly to achieve an improvement on the audit result. Again, these details were canvased with the Select Committee, including task teams that look at specific issues flagged by the Auditor-General and by the way, there is a post-audit action plan, which tells you just how very little the chairperson of that parliamentary committee paid attention.

JEREMY MAGGS: Mr Brink, let me ask you this question. Part of your problem, I would imagine, is dealing with increasing frustration among your residents. For instance, as you and I are having this conversation, I’ve just read about a 30-hour water shutdown in parts of Tshwane. It’s all about the optics. How are you dealing with that mounting anger among people in the greater Pretoria area?

CILLIERS BRINK: So I think it’s many municipalities and all municipalities in Gauteng certainly. The water shutdown that you’ve just mentioned is because of Rand Water maintenance issues. I think you’re in Johannesburg where they’ve had far worse water issues, not always because of what’s happening in Johannesburg, but because of problems on the Rand Water supply. The same with Ekurhuleni, Mogale and so on.

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The best that you can do in these circumstances is to be clear and candid with residents to communicate proactively what are the problems and what are you doing about them. I think that there’s always room for improvement in Tshwane about how we communicate with residents and how we interact.

These are difficult times, we’ve got to admit it. We’re not shooting the lights out here, we’re trying to execute a rescue mission, trying to escape the forces of state failure, essentially. But I believe that if we communicate clearly and candidly and consistently, that will at least provide you with a measure of time to put in place what needs to be put in place.

JEREMY MAGGS: Cilliers Brink, thank you very much indeed.

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