Caretaker’s performance questioned

The basic education department is yet to explain the logic behind appointing Johannes Mohlala, who has an ostensibly dubious past, as caretaker of the North West provincial department.

The erstwhile municipal manager of Fetakgomo Greater Tubatse municipality in Limpopo was in July 2018 announced by Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga as the head of the national intervention team deployed to stabilise North West.

This after President Cyril Ramaphosa’s decision to place the province under administration due to deteriorating governance in the wake of violent protests for then embattled premier Supra Mahumapelo to go.

But there has been growing discontent with the education department’s performance, with a total of R351 million unused since the department was placed under administration in 2018. This despite the province being mostly rural and grappling a shortage of schools, poor sanitary conditions and dilapidated school buildings.

A year after the department was placed under administration, the North West standing committee on provincial public accounts called on the education department to address irregular expenditure of over R1 billion.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) in the province rang alarm bells on the state of the administration as early as September last year – that since the department was placed under administration the situation had not improved. The party said this directly implicated the basic education department’s failure to ensure that its constitutional obligations were fulfilled.

Gavin Edwards, the DA’s spokesperson on education in province, said the team had not reached annual targets and failed to make any meaningful contribution to the department’s financial health, schools infrastructure or quality of education.

“What has been the administrator doing there?” he asked. “We have been asking the department this question over and over again without any answer. He has done nothing.”

Concerned officials in the provincial department have noted that between 2015 and 2017, Mohlala was at the helm of Fetakgomo Greater Tubatse municipality, ranked among the worst in the country. The municipality is embroiled in a R500 million lawsuit instituted against it by an engineer for withholding payments for work done, in which Mohlala was allegedly central to.

Basic education spokesperson Elijah Mhlanga was yet to respond to questions on Mohlala’s performance and what motivated his appointment.

Mohlala could not be reached for comment and did not respond to e-mailed questions.