Cogta committee calls for criminal probe into Nelson Mandela Bay’s dubious job adverts

On Wednesday, 6 May, just after lunch, an increasingly annoyed Dr Zweli Mkhize, chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta), looked up from his laptop screen at the delegation from the Nelson Mandela Bay metro.

“I have a circular that I was made aware of [advertising] two positions [in the metro]. It is in the Traffic and Licensing Services, Grade 4, with a salary range of R201,000. Do you remember this?” he asked the metro’s chief financial officer, Jackson Ngcelwane. The circular bore a signature ostensibly belonging to Ngcelwane as acting city manager.

Ngcelwane replied, “While I was sitting here, I was informed of the same circular. I do not know how my name got to be in an internal circular, naming myself as the acting city manager.”

The committee had spent all morning questioning the flawed processes used to appoint yet another acting city manager for the metro. The metro’s permanent city manager, Dr Noxolo Nqwazi, has been suspended and is currently on trial for fraud, corruption, money laundering and contravening the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA).

She was suspended in 2024, and since then, the metro has had a series of acting city managers.

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The current chief operating officer, advocate Lonwabo Ngoqo, had been acting as the city manager, but his contract expired at the end of April.

At one point, Mkhize told the speaker of the Nelson Mandela Bay council, Eugene Johnson: “We are all politicians here. If you start to do a political dance, we can read it. We are not going to be confused like that. You are confusing us, and I think it is deliberate. But I am not accusing you.”

The committee concluded that as of 30 April, there had been no city manager, acting or otherwise, in the metro.

The council initially selected Ngcelwane for the acting position, but he officially declined the role on Monday, May 4.

“I had a meeting with the executive mayor,” Ngcelwane told the committee. “I shared that I believe I had a conflict of interest and that my appointment will amount to irregular expenditure. I never acted as city manager.”

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It was only on 12 May, after the Portfolio Committee asked the Eastern Cape Cogta MEC to intervene, that Charity Sihunu, a deputy director in the province’s Cogta department, was appointed as acting city manager until 31 May.

On Wednesday, 6 May, during the discussion about the internal circular advertising the jobs, Ngcelwane said that after he had alerted the acting director for corporate services, Yolanda Dakuse, this circular and others containing adverts for jobs were withdrawn.

“They have now sent out a group message reversing all the communications that they sent out the day before yesterday and yesterday. A correction was issued,” said Ngcelwane.

But Mkhize was not backing down: “The issue is that you have a circular out there that is signed by [Ngcelwane] as the acting city manager. He said he declined the position and never accepted it from the start. We have a very unusual situation. There was no acting city manager at the time.

“We just picked up one circular. There should be more in the system. I initially raised it as a theoretical issue — but what we feared has now occurred,” said Mkhize, referring to his concerns over what would happen if the metro was running without a city manager.

Fraud

The Democratic Alliance’s Marina van Zyl said this was fraud and she would be compelled to open another case against the metro. Cathlene Labuschagne, also from the DA, said every item discussed with the Nelson Mandela Bay metro had shown a pattern of not being done correctly.

The metro’s executive mayor, Babalwa Lobishe, said it was “disturbing to learn about this. I am happy that the adverts were recalled.”

Mkhize replied: “I didn’t hear you say you will be investigating anything. Mayor, you are just too cool. We expect you to deal with it.” Lobishe said she would follow “due process”.

“Mayor, the buck stops with you,” Mkhize persisted. “We need to issue something here. We need to know who did the ‘copy and paste’ on this. This is criminal. This is not good. We are going to need you to do the investigation. We want to know what action was taken. We want to see a proper criminal case.”

Dakuse, who joined the meeting electronically, said she wanted to “profusely apologise” for the advert. She confirmed that “all those adverts” had been withdrawn.

She said her department had not been informed that Ngcelwane had turned down the offer to act as city manager.

“There was an error of judgment or a lack of communication,” she said.

The committee called for a report into the incident. DM