By: Refilwe Mochoari

Mangaung Metro Municipality is on the brink of transformation, but service delivery challenges continue to haunt residents. Power outages, water interruptions, sewer overflows and procurement issues are some of the service delivery challenges faced by the municipality.

 When Mayor Gregory Nthatisi took the helm in April 2023, he took over a metro in crisis, placed under administration on Section 139(7) intervention since 2019, but he was determined to take the hot seat and excel in it.

Nthatisi says he was called to the municipality by his political party, the ANC, mainly to stabilise the municipality along the four cardinal points as expressed in the Financial Recovery Plan (FRP), which are to stabilise governance, to address service delivery, to look into finances, and to stabilise the institution.

He says the metro was under a series of instabilities with regards to governance and financial discipline, which affected service delivery to the communities which are served by the metro.

He says the decision to put him in this hot seat was informed by several infighting between political parties.

“The scramble was the control of the metro, not based on the party that won the election, but on buttering and collaboration of individuals beyond party alliance and party mandate.

“I was called to come and deal with those issues, and upon my arrival, the metro was subjected to Section 139 intervention (7) emerging from Section 139(5)”, said Mayor Nthatisi.

He explains that subsection five deals with intervention from the province and subsection seven deals with interventions from the national government.

“There were two teams that were sent from the national government, one was from the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta), and the other one was from the National Treasury.

“Unfortunately, those teams could not do their work as sent by their respective bodies, mainly because those that were rep-resenting political parties as councillors were fighting the intervention and fighting the team.

“They did not allow them to do their work. They threatened them and confined them to their offices and to their homes.

“But also some of the members in the intervention team, were not equal to the challenges that the metro had.

“They left their areas as junior officials and they were elevated to act as heads of departments (HODs), so the knowledge economy was not equal to the demand on the ground, particularly at the level where the crisis was, and that is why I am here”, said the mayor.

Upon his arrival, Nthatisi says he had to stabilise the metro and the first thing he had to do was to clean up to ensure that ANC councillors work together and carry their mandate as sent by their organisation and equally so, ensure that the council does its work through its committees and they cooperate in ensuring that the work of the government is done.

Nthatisi says he can confirm that that aspect of governance is fully attended to.

“Committees are doing their work, politicians are doing their work, the council seating procedures are followed, and the implementation of regulations is in place,” Nthatisi said.

AG Report and Leadership Instability

However, the Auditor General of South Africa (AGSA) during a Standing committee on public accounts (SCOPA) presentation gave a dire picture of the state of the municipality.

Despite ongoing interventions and a recovery plan the municipality faced persistent problems which include R278 million in irregular expenditure, R123 million in wasteful expenditure, and a total of R297 million grant was withheld by the national treasury due to slow project implementation. Another issue highlighted by the AG is the procurement processes, with unsupported performance reports and material irregularities.

“A cyber-attack caused by poor information technology safeguards had disrupted billing and worsened the municipality’s financial crisis.

“Infrastructure projects such as Thaba Nchu wastewater treatment works faced severe delays with poor project management leading to an environment damage, the report states.

Despite external support, Mangaung continued to operate with ineffective leadership which affected ser-vice delivery.

In response to the report, Nthatisi says the next step he had to take was to stabilise the administration.

“When I arrived here, the municipal manager and HOD were acting in those positions.

“In the current administration between 2021 and 2023, the metro had seven acting municipal managers. A city manager is ap-pointed for five years, but in Mangaung, we have had seven city managers in two years.

“Now that is the level of instability that I found when I came into this municipality.

“We had people acting in senior positions that they did not qualify for, not only in terms of qualifications but also in terms of experience, because in order to be an HOD, you have to pass certain stages and I can safely say that situation is stabilised as we speak,” he said. Nthatisi says he had to appoint HODs and within six months of his period as acting mayor, he was dragged to court by mem-bers of smaller political parties and some members of the ANC to try and nullify the appointment of some individuals like the speaker, Lawrence Mathae, including himself as the mayor had to be fought in court for 6 months.

He says it took another 6 months in court fighting with opposition parties on how the procedure was to be followed for appointing the city manager, saying that even though he came in 2023, it took 2024 to appoint a city manager.

Addressing the discrepancies in middle management.

“The metro does not have enough professionals in their discipline to ensure that the nuts and bolts of what the metro must attend to is done. “Here I am talking about engineers, administrators, and legal experts. People who must serve in a particular space to ensure that service is delivered.

 “In the system as we speak, we do not have middle management, because a number of the people in these positions are acting in the interim.

“Some of those who are acting are not qualified in the areas in which they are acting.

“Some of these areas need people with specialties in administration, engineering, architecture, and town planning, and those are professions that we need to bring into the metro to ensure that the metro does well.

“Now the people in these positions currently either do not have the qualifications, or they do have qualifications but not hold the relevant positions. “Currently, we have developed a company organogram which will go to the next council for approval, so that we can place people according to their ability, then recruit and appoint people whose specialties we need, with the cognisance that the mar-ket is scarce.

“We have engaged institutions of higher learning and some professional bodies to help source the people that we need to complete the structure that the metro needs to address the matter on the ground, which is that of service delivery,” he said.

Nthatisi says the metro’s focus area when it comes to service delivery is to prioritise issues such as water, housing, sanitation, and crime prevention.

“Water is life”

Nthatishi says an R8 billion water pipeline will be erected, bringing water from the Xhariep dam to Mangaung. He says due to Mangaung being a water-scarce area, this is the best solution to ensure that people do not encounter water problems.

“Sanitation is health and gives dignity”

Nthatisi says the municipality needs about R3.1 billion to attend to sanitation challenges.

He says 79 000 of the 300 000 households in Mangaung are non-waterborne. He explains that 50 744 households of the 79 000 are Pitlarene toilets, 17 000 are bucket systems, and 11 256 are those that are not accounted for because the residents have erected shacks in informal settlements.

Roads

“Mangaung has 1 600 km of tarred roads and the metro needs R8 billion to address this issue.

Seven thousand people in need of homes

Moving forward, we are not going to allow people to take land by force or locate themselves. With the understanding that people must get land. “We will use scientific discipline and ensure that we take our people to habitable places so that their lives will not be in danger, where development will take place and principles of town planning have taken place.

“We are in talks with Cogta, Public Works, and Human Settlements to give us land so that we can accommodate our people.

“We will also buy buildings from the private sector and convert them into rental housing in the city.

Safety

We are planning to employ over 50 safety officers and temporary staff to ensure that the safety in all seven towns of the met-ro is up to standard. “Lastly, we will be having a safety indaba where all layers of the community will be present to develop a modality on how to take care of ourselves in the community,” Nthatisi said in an interview with Journal News.