Nelson Mandela Bay mayor accused by her own chief of staff of misleading Parliament

Nelson Mandela Bay Mayor Babalwa Lobishe is facing a public crisis from within her own office.

In a scathing 14-page letter, her chief of staff, Mlungisi Lumka, accuses her of lying to Parliament, attempting to fabricate evidence and presiding over a municipality in freefall.

The controversy erupted after Lobishe’s appearance before the portfolio committee on cooperative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta) on 24 and 25 March, during which months of unanswered correspondence and chronic municipal failures came under scrutiny.

On the second day of the hearing, Lobishe issued Lumka with a formal notice of intention to suspend him, accusing him of gross dereliction of duty for failing to keep her informed of the committee’s correspondence. He responded within 24 hours with a letter making several allegations that, if true, raise serious questions about Lobishe’s fitness to hold office.

The hearing itself had probed a litany of municipal failures, including a controversial R25-million transformer lease, chronic underspending, the withdrawal of grants and persistent questions about her administration’s accountability.

Months of unanswered correspondence from the municipality had already set a tense tone, prompting warnings from committee chair Dr Zweli Mkhize that such silence was unacceptable.

Explanations shifted repeatedly

When Lobishe finally appeared before the committee, accompanied by a seven-member delegation, her explanations shifted repeatedly. On the question of the unanswered correspondence, she pointed fingers at a secretary who she claimed had failed to bring the committee’s letters to her attention – and ultimately at her chief of staff, whom she accused of failing to keep her informed.

She suggested disciplinary action had been taken against the secretary. MPs on the committee, citing their own sources within the municipality, said that was not true.

Though reluctant to engage in what he called an “invitation to have a public fight”, Lumka said he felt legally obligated to respond. He prefaced his 14-page rebuttal with a pointed adage: “Never wrestle with a pig. You get dirty and the pig likes it.”

What followed was anything but a mud fight. It was a precise and sequential account of what Lumka says is a pattern of dishonesty and institutional dysfunction that predates last week’s parliamentary appearance and goes to the heart of how Lobishe runs her office.

He said the City’s “chronic state of decline” was in no small part due to Lobishe’s actions and that through her appearance before the parliamentary committee last week, she became “the face of entropy”.

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When contacted about his response to Lobishe’s suspension notice, Lumka declined to comment further, saying all he had to say was contained in the letter.

In it, he writes: “You lied in Parliament as though you have some kind of ‘impunity insurance’ that allows you to act without consequence. Tolerating it will amount to complicity.”

On the central allegation – that Lobishe misled Parliament about the unanswered correspondence – Lumka said the evidence was unambiguous. During the parliamentary proceedings, Lobishe texted him to ask why he had never informed her of the committee’s letters.

He responded by forwarding her a message thread with the relevant documents attached, dated 7 March. The messages, he said, had been read – “blue-ticked” – and never responded to. He further alleged that Lobishe’s own personal assistant had brought the same correspondence to her attention days earlier.

When she could not reach him on the phone during the parliamentary proceedings, she told the committee that Lumka had a tendency to disappear – an allegation he rejected as a deliberate attempt to damage his reputation.

He said he had not answered her calls because he did not want to openly contradict her before the committee. He had also been deliberately excluded from participating in the proceedings and was subject to a formal gag order that prevented him from speaking in public forums where both he and the mayor were present.

“Before this written gag order, you had told me in my face in October that I must be a shadow and stop asking questions in meetings and saying things that should be said by you.”

The most serious allegation in Lumka’s rebuttal concerns what he says was an attempt to fabricate evidence after the hearing. He said Lobishe knew there was never any disciplinary action taken against the secretary she had blamed before the committee, and her insistence that such a letter existed was a lie.

“After your performance in Parliament, I am aware of your attempts to get the letter fabricated. Unfortunately, for this fabrication to happen, you will have to forge my signature and that of the director in the office. The director and I are not going to be complicit in tarnishing [her] 20-plus year professional profile as a secretary for the sake of political expediency.”

Lumka argued that the issues were not new. Since taking up his position on 1 April 2025, he said he had repeatedly had to step in to manage correspondence that Lobishe avoided – citing the NMB Civil Society Coalition, a residents’ association in Kariega and a crucial multinational enterprise as among those he had engaged with on the mayor’s behalf.

He described a mayor whose attention was perpetually dispersed, who was in “constant crisis mode” and obsessed with public relations at the expense of governance. He had made efforts to establish a system where the mayor’s diary was planned regularly. It worked for a time – until, in his words, the mayor became “inconsistent and disappearing”. The parliamentary correspondence debacle, he said, was both “predictable and avoidable”.

“Municipal finances are in the red. Corruption is the order of the day. Properties at the beachfront are operated without lease agreements. Electricity, water and sanitation infrastructure is collapsing – we are a dark city. Neighbourhoods are filthy. The municipality is chronically underperforming, perennially. The regional economy is bleeding.

“Your priority is to suspend me.”

He concluded the letter by calling on Lobishe to take responsibility and said the city deserved better leadership.

Mayor ‘consulting lawyers’

When contacted for comment, Lobishe said she would reserve her response. “At this stage I would rather not comment as I am still consulting lawyers on the matter after noting a lot of misrepresentation of facts and lack of professionalism whilst the matter is still to be concluded internally,” she said.

Mkhize said the committee would not comment on the letter and would await formal reports addressed to it.

Reacting to the matter, Eastern Cape Cogta MEC Zolile Williams said council rules required the council to investigate the allegations of lying under oath in Parliament against Lobishe.

“Cogta is aware about the appearance of Nelson Mandela Bay Mayor before the Cogta parliamentary portfolio committee. At this stage the matter ought be referred to the municipal council for a resolution,” Williams said on Sunday.

“In terms of the rules of order of the municipal council and the code of conduct for councillors, the matter must be investigated by the municipal council, and at the conclusion, the municipal council should transmit the findings and recommendations to the MEC,” he added.

Democratic Alliance MP and Cogta spokesperson Marina van Zyl, who sat on the parliamentary committee, said she was not surprised by Lumka’s account. “It reflects the state of affairs in the metro of a mayor who is clearly not in control of her administration, much less service delivery. This reflects the absolute state of paralysis in the municipality. As things stand, with the mid-term report at the end of December 2025, the city has only achieved 16.6% of its service delivery targets,” she said.

Van Zyl said the political infighting had direct consequences for residents. “The City cannot make any positive progress in service delivery while members of the ruling party are fighting amongst themselves.”

On the question of consequences, Van Zyl said the committee would first need to assess the evidence.

“The Cogta portfolio committee would have to look at whether there is concrete evidence available and that prima facie evidence exists that our committee and Parliament was misled and consider its options,” she said, adding that the council itself had a responsibility to act. “It is also very important for the council to investigate those very serious allegations and to launch an extensive investigation and to institute disciplinary action against the executive mayor.” DM