Nelson Mandela Bay needs 101 remedies, but will anyone implement them?

Government leaders have warned that resistance from within Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality’s administration is slowing the implementation of a wide-ranging intervention programme aimed at stabilising the troubled metro.

The warning follows a high-level intervention meeting in Gqeberha on Wednesday, 10 June 2026, where Eastern Cape Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) MEC Zolile Williams and Deputy Minister of Cogta Dr Dickson Masemola met the municipality’s Section 154 intervention team, executive Mayor Babalwa Lobishe and members of her mayoral committee.

At the centre of the government’s concerns is the slow implementation of 101 urgent corrective measures identified by an intervention team deployed to the metro in December.

Williams said progress had been hampered by resistance from officials within municipal departments and the continued absence of a permanent city manager, which he said was undermining efforts to drive reforms.

“As it is currently, there’s no stability in this municipality. What you see is elements of resistance within departments because there’s no city manager who can enforce anything upon the officials. There’s resistance to the intervention team that we have placed here, and we feel that it requires a properly appointed city manager to drive those processes,” Williams said.

The MEC said irregular and wasteful expenditure had increased sharply over the past two years, rising from R21-billion to about R31-billion, which he described as unacceptable.

“If you remember, it was R21-billion. Now it has increased to about R31-billion, and it’s unacceptable,” he said. “One of the issues I can tell you is that if the City can accumulate irregular expenditure close to R8-billion more, it shows you that whatever the team is doing, there is no positive response to the work that is being done by the team,” Williams added.

He said the intervention team had attempted to break down the irregular and wasteful expenditure figures and identify corrective actions, but municipal management had failed to implement its recommendations.

“Our team here has raised about 101 issues that need to be attended to immediately, but there’s slow progress in implementation which is why you need a city manager, as in yesterday,” Williams said.

The city manager saga

Attention has also turned to the unresolved suspension of Municipal Manager Dr Noxolo Nqwazi, whose more than two-year absence has triggered a succession of acting appointments and left the municipality without a permanent accounting officer.

It was recently revealed in Parliament that Nqwazi has been out of office for more than two years and has earned well over R6.7-million in salary while on suspension.

Nqwazi was suspended for allegedly breaching the Municipal Finance Management Act and Municipal Systems Act.

She was also arrested over her alleged role in the approval of a R24-million tender for toilets in informal settlements. The contract – awarded during the Covid-19 National State of Disaster – was later flagged by the Special Investigating Unit.

Williams in May wrote to Lobishe instructing that Nqwazi be reinstated. Lobishe, however, pushed back this instruction.

The instruction from Cogta Eastern Cape came after Nqwazi’s legal team on May 1 also wrote to the City, insisting they reinstate her after not starting disciplinary processes against her.

Williams said his intervention in the matter was motivated by governance concerns and the cost to ratepayers.

“My initiative to engage the City around the question of Dr Nqwazi was informed by the analysis of what the City has paid in terms of a senior official who is staying at home for so long without any action being taken against them,” he said.

“In terms of good governance, that does not augur well. The residents of Nelson Mandela Bay cannot pay for an official who is sitting at home without disciplinary processes being taken against that particular official.”

The MEC said resolving the Nqwazi matter was essential if the municipality wanted to restore stability and appoint a permanent accounting officer.

“It’s now two-and-a-half years that Dr Nqwazi has been out of office; take action because that’s the right thing to do, so that if you discipline Dr Nqwazi, you then have space to appoint a municipal manager permanently.”

Williams said the municipality had accepted advice from the government and had committed to implementing it within two weeks. He also confirmed that he intended engaging Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana and the National Treasury to expedite the matter.

“The sooner we conclude, the better for the City in terms of service delivery and stability at management level.”

The municipality’s leadership instability deepened this week when councillors appointed Chief Operating Officer Advocate Lonwabo Ngoqo as acting city manager for three months following the expiry of acting city manager Charity Shinunu’s term.

Williams said the government would scrutinise the legality of the latest appointment and was also exploring the possibility of appointing an external administrator to support the intervention process.

“We’ve got a few individuals who have shown interest, but we don’t want to bring somebody with a cloud hanging over his head for Nelson Mandela Bay,” he said. “We want to bring an administrator who has nothing that will make us defocus the intervention.”

Section 154 under the spotlight

Masemola signalled that the national government was preparing to intensify its oversight of the metro rather than immediately escalating the intervention to a Section 139 administration.

Section 154 interventions focus on support and capacity-building, while Section 139 allows the provincial government to assume greater control of municipal functions and, in extreme circumstances, dissolve a municipal council.

The deputy minister said he would return to Nelson Mandela Bay in July for a two-day assessment involving every municipal department.

“We’re on track strengthening Section 154,” Masemola said. “We’re coming back in July with the MEC for that two-day meeting to go into each and every department of the metro, including subsections of the administration.”

The visit will interrogate reports compiled by the intervention team and municipal leadership and evaluate progress on the 101 identified action items.

“Of the 101 active areas that have been identified, how far are we with the implementation? Where are the bottlenecks? What are the constraints?” he said.

Masemola stressed that no intervention would succeed without cooperation from municipal officials and political leaders.

“Our interest is to stabilise the City. We have just communicated a message to the leadership that nobody will come and stabilise the City except themselves.

“We can put Section 139, that we can do. But the point is Section 139 can’t replace the 3,000 or 4,000 workers of Nelson Mandela Metro.”

This comes after Williams in May in a leaked recording from a meeting with City leaders can be heard warning that Cogta Minister Velenkosini Hlabisa had expressed concern about the situation in the City.

“After this week’s interaction with Parliament, I told you that this dilly-dallying will result in unintended consequences. As the municipality is interacting with the Cogta portfolio committee, don’t be shocked when the minister invokes Section 139 and places this municipality under administration,” he is heard saying.

“Once you’re under administration, you will report directly to that official [the administrator], and they will be responsible for taking decisions in the City. Your opinions will matter less; imagine a metro under administration, it speaks to your capacity to manage and lead the City politically.

“So there’s this expression from the minister, and we don’t know if the minister will drive this to the Cabinet for approval – anything can happen.”

Mayor acknowledges shortcomings

Lobishe acknowledged the concerns raised by the government and conceded that some municipal departments had not provided the level of support expected for the intervention process.

“We did commit in terms of departments that are not putting their weight behind the support,” she said. “We are going to give feedback in the next two weeks on areas that are not polished in a manner that we should have performed on.”

She also confirmed that resolving the City manager matter remained a priority for the municipality.

“It’s part of our agenda, and it’s a topical matter which all of us want to conclude on,” Lobishe said. DM