Under-fire Makana mayor dodges crisis control meeting

CIVIL society organisations have written a harsh letter to Makana Mayor Nomhle Gaga and her executive after she coldshouldered attempts to convene an urgent meeting to discuss the shocking financial and other problems facing the besieged municipality.

Makana is unable to pay tens of millions it owes to creditors, including Eskom and Amatola Water – which are together owed almost R100-million.

Amatola Water, which three years ago stepped in as the municipality’s bulk water service provider to avert a deepening water crisis, pulled out of Grahamstown earlier this year because of the amount it was owed.

Eskom is threatening to throttle the city’s electricity supply from December because the municipality failed to meet a payment plan it agreed to earlier this year.

The Concerned Citizens Committee to Save Makana (CCCSM), which represents committees and members of the Grahamstown Residents Association, Grahamstown Business Forum & Makana Unity League, came out guns blazing because, it says, Gaga has rejected every offer of help made by every sector of civil society, including that from its own members, from the Public Service Accountability Monitor, Black Sash, business institutions and schools.

CCCSM chair Ron Weissenberg said Gaga had also broken her side of an agreement taken with civil society to avoid having to again place the municipality under administration.

He says that at a meeting in July it was agreed the CCCSM would stop agitating to place the municipality under full administration, which would inevitably have resulted in the need for elections.

The committee had agreed on condition that a municipal commercial turnaround specialist was seconded to the municipality. He says it was also agreed that this specialist, the mayoral committee and civil society, would regularly meet so that civil society could do its bit to assist in resolving the municipality’s problems, particularly with regard to the financial crisis it faced.

Gaga had broken the agreement despite the deep and worsening crisis Makana faced, he said. fresh municipal

“Your disregard for the public and civil society bodies leaves no option but to take matters further in order to protect the citizens of Makana from the actions of a dysfunctional council that cannot even get the basics right,” warned Weissenberg.

He said the CCCSM required assurances that Gaga would meet with it before a turnaround specialist was appointed. Civil society would only endorse the appointment of someone who was correctly skilled and mandated, saying they feared another waste of ratepayers’ money.

Makana municipality had not responded at the time of writing.