‘How did they spend R4.7bn?’
The new mayor of Tshwane, Randall Williams, has launched an investigation to find out how the administrators appointed by the Gauteng government to oversee the metro’s affairs spent almost R4.7bn in just three months.
The provincial government placed the DA-led council under administration in March after a standoff between political parties which prevented the approval of budgets and affected key services.
Williams told the Sunday Times that he had instructed his finance MMC, Mare-Lise Fourie, to investigate financial decisions taken over seven months by the 10-member administration team led by Mpho Nawa.
Williams was elected mayor last week after the ANC chose not to field a candidate.
The Tshwane metro has been rocked by leadership instability since Solly Msimanga resigned as mayor last year. He was succeeded by Stevens Mokgalapa, who quit in February after he was implicated in a sex scandal.
The council was put under administration the following month by Gauteng’s co
operative governance & traditional affairs MEC, Lebogang Maile, after failing on several occasions to elect a new mayor.
The administrators, according to Williams, ran through a R284m operating surplus and went on to incur a R4.4bn deficit since they were appointed in March.
He said he would like Fourie to report back in two weeks but acknowledged it could take longer.
Williams said Fourie was an “expert” on municipal finances and had been a chief financial officer “for many decades before she became an MMC”.
He added: “So that’s going to be her task over the next few weeks, to analyse the expenditure within that one quarter – just think, in one quarter they spent almost R4.7bn.”
Asked whether he suspects foul play over the administrators’ spending, Williams said he would not want to begin his 11-month term by making allegations.
He said that because the financial activities of the administrators were kept a secret, the city’s expenses in this period first needed to be investigated.
“First of all, we were completely kept in
the dark. There was no oversight, but that’s also the way the law is drafted. They are accountable only to the MEC, and that’s why placing a municipality under administration is so dangerous if you do it for the wrong reasons,” he said.
According to Williams the reasons for placing the Tshwane municipality under administration were misguided.
Tshwane had political instability which was caused deliberately to put the ANC back in power through the back door, he said.
“I can understand if you want to do it [put a municipality under administration] in Sedibeng and the other municipalities where there’s total chaos, where the municipality doesn’t function at all, but here, despite the fact that we had political instability ... one thing we did not have [is] administrative instability. The administration was always functioning well,” Williams said.
“But they’ve now replaced political instability with administrative instability, and now we’re actually in crisis mode in the City of Tshwane. We now have to implement a financial recovery plan.
“And its the so simple things they couldn’t get right, for example the water management tenders.”