The Democratic Alliance has indicated that it will go to court if the Eastern Cape MEC for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Xolile Nqatha tries to change the structure of the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality.

The DA and a number of other parties in the metro’s council voted against the decision by Nqatha to do so on Friday — but the law will allow for him to go ahead in any event.

There are 12 political parties with seats in the current council of Nelson Mandela Bay. The ANC and the DA received roughly the same number of votes (around 40%) in the November 2021 local government elections (the EFF holds eight seats).

To form a majority government, a coalition must have 61 seats. The other parties in council are the FF+, ACDP, the Defenders of the People (DOP) and the Patriotic Alliance, with two seats each. The Good Party, UDM, AIC and AIM each have a single seat. The Northern Alliance (NA) is the largest of the small parties, with three seats. 

The party and its new coalition partners, the Freedom Front Plus, the United Democratic Movement, the African Independent Congress, the Pan-Africanist Congress, the Abantu Integrity Movement and the African Christian Democratic Party, are getting ready to bring a motion of no confidence in executive mayor Eugene Johnson later this week.

New coalition agreement signed in Nelson Mandela Bay in bid to unseat ANC-led government

“Nqatha’s plan to scrap the mayoral executive system and introduce a collective executive committee with ward participation is nothing more than a desperate attempt by the ANC to cling to power in the Metro,” the DA’s mayoral candidate, Retief Odendaal said.

While KwaZulu-Natal’s municipalities, for instance, run in the way proposed by Nqatha, Odendaal said changing the structure of a municipality has never taken place in South Africa after a local government election. 

“A co-governance committee will cause further chaos and can lead to restructuring and retrenchments,” he said. “It undermines democracy and the will of the people of Nelson Mandela Bay for the political expediency of the ANC. We will not be dictated to by a tyrant that seeks to destroy the democratic fibre of this council.”

Service delivery or lack thereof 

In the past year, the Nelson Mandela Bay metro has stopped providing services to about 52,000 poor families, according to figures from the Eastern Cape Treasury, due to a problematic registry.

But this is only one of the many issues facing the beleaguered metro that is either facing a significant restructuring of its political government framework or a new coalition government in the next few days or weeks.

In recent weeks the city had been ravaged by violent service delivery protests that have led to 6km of Eskom infrastructure being destroyed and the farming community left without electricity for more than ten days.

Apart from services to the poor, Rano Kayser, The Democratic Alliance’s Caucus Leader for Nelson Mandela Bay, said according to the mid-year performance management report, the municipality managed to meet only 25% (4/16) of its Key Performance Indicators within the Basic Service Delivery Key Performance Area.

Kayser said no ward committees have been established yet, nine months after the election. 

“The establishment of ward committees encourages public participation in municipalities in a bid to take government closer to the people. It gives ordinary people a formal channel to voice concerns, raise service delivery issues and be consulted on developmental issues in their wards.

“It is also a cornerstone of the MEC for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Xolile Nqatha’s plans to change the political leadership system in the metro to one where parties are to be represented in high-level oversight committees in the same proportion that they are represented in government. Local matters will then be left in the hands of the ward committees.

“While most municipalities in the country have already established ward committees for the new term of office, Nelson Mandela Bay seems to fumble from one bureaucratic crisis to the next — with no end in sight,” Kayser said.

Notice of change

In his letter motivating for a structure change, Nqatha states that he is giving notice of his decision to change the municipal structure, but did not provide timelines. 

In his motivation, he said the government in the metro has become very unstable as politics have now spilt over into the corridors of the municipality and have divided management and administration. 

He also claimed that the members of the mayoral committee are “seeing themselves as mayors in their own right and they do as they wish in their portfolios”.

“In order to process anything administratively, management looks at which party [wrote] the directive and this has led to chaos in the municipality. The MMCs don’t want to take instructions from the Executive Mayor.”

He added that the mayoral committee had collapsed and was no longer sitting and that council was only sitting for “special meetings”, and then only for urgent compliance issues. 

“This compromises service delivery as matters of departmental performance and service delivery are not tabled to committees and the council at large,” Nqatha said.

Gary van Niekerk from the Northern Alliance said, “Things are really very uncertain now.

“The ANC must admit its failures,” Van Niekerk added.

Tukela Zamani from the Defenders of the People (DOP), who is the MMC for Budget and Treasury said they have noted the MEC’s communication to the mayor.

He said they will support the MEC’s plans if it will solve the service delivery issues in the metro. “Then I would support it, but at this stage there is no evidence to suggest that it will.

“The concerns over service delivery contained therein are valid, but the assertions made by the MEC regarding the conduct of the Mayoral Committee are too generalised and somewhat misinformed.

“The budget and treasury committee has only ever missed one meeting and that was because committee members from the ANC were attending to the passing away of a fellow councillor. That meeting was reconvened a week later. I have never missed a single mayoral committee or a council meeting. I have never issued an instruction to any official nor have I ever encountered a fellow MMC doing so. Rather, I will write a detailed memo with recommendations for the consideration of the Mayor. 

“The intention of the MEC to amend the governance structure is something that should be thoroughly engaged on,” he said.

DOP is not a signatory to the new coalition agreement. 

Collection and budget crises

Odendaal said the metro is facing very distressing issues.

Among other issues, its collection rate has dropped by about 10% to around 75%.

At the heart of this, Odendaal said, was the need to revise the water rebate policy. The city currently has punitive water tariffs for high-volume users. But if a problem occurred, like a leak or damage due to copper pipe theft, for example, ratepayers can only ask for one rebate a year. 

“It is very important that the water rebate policy is adjusted,” he said. “It is a very big problem.”

He explained that the city had arrear payments of R10.5-billion and R2-billion of this is water accounts that haven’t been paid from June 2021 to June 2022. 

This, he explained, gives the wrong impression of the city’s collection rates. 

“There are thousands of these cases,” he said. 

But he added that the departments within the city also underspend the capital budget with only about two-thirds of the total budget having been spent in the past financial year. 

Roads, water and sanitation had not spent around a quarter of their budget and public health only spent 49% of their budget, Odendaal said. 

This, Odendaal added, is putting the city at high risk of losing more of its conditional grant funding. 

‘Conflicting interests’

Nqatha has appealed to all political parties in Nelson Mandela Bay to support his plans. 

“The political environment in the municipality has never been a stable one even in the previous term of the council which was characterised by [councillors being killed] and a slow pace of service delivery. 

“This new term is also riddled with instability as politics have spilt over to management to an extent that it has divided management and administration and created factions amongst them.

“The current coalition government has aggravated matters by creating a state of lawlessness and causing severe damage leading to the collapse of administration in the municipality. The Members of the Mayoral Committee (MMCs) see themselves as mayors in their own right, and they do as they wish in their portfolios relying on the administration (the Executive Directors) to execute all that they want to implement,” he said in a statement.

Nqatha added that coalition politics are affecting decision-making within the council and this has led to the non-appointment of senior directors which in turn has a negative effect on administration and service delivery. 

“The coalition partners always have conflicting interests because of ideological gulf. As a result self-serving interests manifest themselves when decisions that relate to resources are taken,” he added.

“The status quo in the municipality has attracted public concern, especially the business fraternity whom the economy of the city depends on,” he concluded.

While the letter to introduce the new system was signed on the same day that the new coalition partners signed their agreement, Nqatha said his plans had been in motion since May already when he called a meeting to “urge councillors to prioritise the interest of the people of the metro than their inter and intra political party interests.” It was in this meeting that he shared his intention for a new model of governance by amending section 12 notice. DM/MC