The Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomes the proclamation of 21 August 2020 in the Government Gazette in which President Ramaphosa authorises the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) to investigate allegations of corruption, maladministration and the awarding of tenders in the Maluti-a-Phofung Local Municipality.
Since 2016, the DA have been concerned about the complete collapse of governance and financial management in the Municipality. In January 2018, the DA requested Premier Ntombela to place the Municipality under administration, which was done in March of that year.
The allegedly corrupt leadership in Maluti-a-Phofung, however, staged a fight-back campaign which cost the Free State Department of Co-operative Governance (COGTA) R20 million in security measures to protect the lives of the administrators. Eventually the then Mayor, Vusi Tshabalala, was forced to resign in May that year. The subsequent election by secret ballot of Cllr Gilbert Mokotso as the new Mayor prompted the Free State ANC to dismiss sixteen of its councillors. This led to by-elections in fifteen wards in Qwa-Qwa in August 2019, which in turn led to the ANC losing ten wards to the breakaway independent ‘MaP-16’ group.
The former Mayor who had conducted a reign of terror and brought Maluti-a-Phofung to its knees financially, was rewarded with a position in the Free State Provincial Legislature after the 2019 elections, and in a sinister move, took up the position of Chief Whip and Chairperson of the Finance and Public Accounts Committee in the Legislature.
In July 2019, we wrote to the Minister of Finance about the illegal budget which had been adopted by the Maluti-a-Phofung Council. In reaction to this, a Joint National Provincial intervention was instituted with a competent team of administrators under Mr Blake Mosley Lefatola being deployed to the Municipality. This team managed to bring some stability to the Municipality and could submit two years financial statements which had not been done in recent times. Accounts were sent out regularly bringing some improvement to the revenue collection. There were various other investigations underway.
However, in March this year, the MEC Nxangisa first replaced Mr Lefatola, and then had Council illegally appoint a new Municipal Manager (MM) and Chief Financial Officer (CFO). These two instantly awarded themselves a 40% salary increase.
By the beginning of June this year, MEC Nxangisa had announced the lifting of the administration entirely. At a NCOP committee meeting in June this year, the close-out report of Mr Lefatola was tabled which highlighted a lot of the corruption and political intimidation going on in the Maluti-a-Phofung Municipality. In the meeting, these very serious allegations were supported by Mr Goliath, the new Administrator, who told of bank accounts being opened on instruction of the Speaker, of illegal appointments and payments taking place.
It was clear that a coup d’etat had been engineered by the MEC Nxangisa, to get rid of the competent administration team who would not allow corruption, and to replace that team with an MM and CFO who could continue the looting which had bankrupted the Municipality.
The DA lodged complaints with the Public Protector in November 2019, and with the SAHRC in January this year, about the corruption involving disaster funding for the water crisis in Qwa-Qwa.
For these reasons the DA welcome in-depth investigations by the SIU which we hope will get to the bottom of the plunder and looting which has characterised Maluti-a-Phofung for the past six years. The DA trust that those guilty of misappropriating grant funding, electricity revenue, and disaster funds will be brought to the justice they deserve.