The new mayor of eThekwini, Cyril Shaba, is reportedly supporting the Section 154 team. Photo: eThekwini Municipality
The progress report of a governance expert tasked with recommending a turnaround plan for the struggling eThekwini Municipality confirms what numerous other reports, taxpayers and businesses have asserted for decades: that KwaZulu-Natal's only major city has weak accountability, low capacity and high corruption.
The report said local governments were “also highly selective about the information provided” to governance experts.
The report was written by former Mayor Mike Sutcliffe, who leads the city's Section 154 technical support team with Cassius Rubisi.
In his progress report, Mr Sutcliffe said there had been a lack of transparency from the local government around sharing information with the team and spending funds.
Other issues included insufficient stakeholder responsiveness, low capacity levels and non-compliance with local government staffing regulations, corruption and serious problems with supply chain management processes, inadequate accountability and poor result management.
Mr Sutcliffe said the Mayor had also refused the team's initial request for information, saying it was “confidential as per Popi regulations”. [Protection of Personal Information] “We will act even if there is no information requesting personal details in sensitive areas.”
He said the refusal had been reported to the Mayor, Speaker and the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs.
The report, written in August, said the city missed deadlines for submitting the requested information, with only “approximately 40 percent” having been provided by July 18.
By contrast, Mr Sutcliffe said the team had “very productive and supportive meetings” with the new mayor, Cyril Chabat, and had also received “significant and positive support from businesses, city authorities and civil society organisations who are also helping to inform the audit report”.
Ethekwini refused to answer questions about the intervention, including whether the mayor ultimately allowed the team access to the information it sought. Mail & Guardian: “Local governments can't cope with this. [to] We cannot answer questions about section 154 support as the support has not been initiated or implemented by the local government.”
The province’s cooperative governance department also did not respond to the M&G’s questions about whether it had been provided with the information the team sought.
The Section 154 team set up by Cogta is one of two teams tasked with building the operational capacity of KwaZulu-Natal's only metro and sorting out its problems – the other is the President's eThekwini Working Group.
According to the progress report, the Section 154 team is focused on “identifying the root causes and other contributing factors of the challenges facing the municipality in order to assist eThekwini in managing its own affairs and carrying out its functions.” This will be done through a diagnostic report, which will be used to determine a turnaround strategy.
There is only so much the team can do to steer the subway in the right direction, and support and advice will be key to the task.
It is the municipality’s responsibility to fully implement its recommendations, but the municipality, under successive mayors, has ignored such advice and, as is well documented, continues to run eThekwini in the interest of individuals and the ruling party.
The presidential team is focusing on government-to-government support for the subway.
But Mr Sutcliffe said in his report that “individuals within eThekwini” had sent copies of a letter from Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana to mayors, chairpersons and city councillors in which the minister said “essentially the section 154 process is a duplication of efforts being undertaken by a team appointed by the president”. Mr Sutcliffe said he was preparing a response to Mr Godongwana on this point.
By working together to turn the local government around, the two teams were able to avoid a more serious Article 139 intervention, which would have effectively rendered the subway dysfunctional and deemed in need of administration.
President Cyril Ramaphosa established the eThekwini Working Group in February following numerous complaints from members of the Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry (which represents more than 3,000 formal businesses and 54,000 informal traders), taxpayers' associations, civil society and trade unions.
The team, led by former member of the European Parliament and former ANC KwaZulu-Natal deputy speaker Mike Mabuyakul, will support the municipality for two years.
Discussions of a full-scale intervention in the metro have been ongoing for years but have been consistently blocked by the ANC, then dominant in the city and province. The ANC also rejected the three people selected to lead the Section 154 intervention on an interim basis – Sutcliffe, Lubisi, a former secretary-general in the presidency, and Thandeka Ellingson of the Moses Kotane Institute, although Ellingson is no longer part of the team.
The Opposition parties were simultaneously seeking intervention of Article 139.
A compromise was finally reached when the opposition settled on the ANC's proposed Article 154 intervention, but again little progress was made.
KwaZulu-Natal's new co-governance MEC, Thulasizwe Buthelezi of the Inkatha Freedom Party, said section 154 intervention would be implemented after a power-sharing agreement was reached in the province in June following the ANC's loss of majority in May's general election. He said Sutcliffe and Lubisi had been appointed as governance experts to lead the process.
Overall findings
In his preliminary report's overall findings, Sutcliffe said the metro had a “very poor relationship” with residents and ratepayers, and eThekwini had to “confront government and go to court” to get results, rather than using the community as a resource to encourage and build good governance.
He also said there were “disturbing themes” of non-compliance and competence levels when it came to the hiring of officials and contractors and the appointment of people to carry out functions.
Mr Sutcliffe said challenges also arose from “a number of serious allegations of corruption which have been identified within city government”, after eight city water officials were murdered and replacements were appointed “with individuals allegedly involved in corruption, maladministration and other practices”.
He said accountability and consequence management were “key areas” that required “advice and support”, adding that all investigations and disciplinary recommendations “must be prioritised without fear or favouritism”.
In a breakdown of basic service delivery in his preliminary report, Mr Sutcliffe found that across parts of the Tube:
- It had poor customer management, a “very unsatisfactory” capital-to-operations ratio, weak asset management and inadequate asset creation.
- Despite the considerable resources available, human habitation units were weak.
- Under the bullet point engineering, Sutcliffe simply wrote: “Capability, capability, capability!”
- In terms of transport, the force was weak and resources were wasted on “fragmented infrastructure and poor links, including buses, IT and infrastructure”.
- There was poor management of code enforcement by the metro police and there was a need for better integration in disaster management.
- The city's parks, recreation, cemeteries and cultural affairs departments were inadequately supported and “weakly managed.”
- There was a lack of mainstreaming on climate change and “overall there was very little engagement between the local community and the private sector.”
He said what was most worrying was that eThekwini was repeatedly reported negatively in the Auditor-General’s National Consolidated Report on Audit Findings for 2021-22, including for fraud, inadequate performance targets, lack of complete or accurate information, failure to meet targets, poorly commissioned projects and inadequate repairs and maintenance.
Mr Sutcliffe said the recovery strategy required evidence-based monitoring and evaluation, as well as stakeholder responsiveness.
Capability levels and non-compliance need to be addressed, urgent action needs to be taken into account allegations of corruption and poor supply chain management, and accountability and consequence management processes need to be put in place.
