Note to Editors: Please find attached English and Afrikaans soundbites by Cllr Suzette Steyn and Sesotho soundbite by Cllr Kabelo Moreeng.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) is urgently escalating Mafube’s ongoing salary crisis to provincial CoGTA leadership and the NCOP to ensure immediate compliance with outstanding financial reporting requirements. This action aims to restore overdue salary payments and prevent further delays, as unpaid workers directly undermine service delivery to residents.
Mafube municipal staff remain uncertain about when their October and November salaries will be paid, or whether December salaries will be on time. This follows repeated salary failures in February, June and September 2025. Because of this, workers have gone on a full-on strike
Although the MEC for CoGTA, Hon. TZ Mokoena, assured workers that salaries would be ring-fenced after announcing the resignation of Municipal Manager Advocate Mothusi Lepheana on 23 June 2025, the newly seconded Acting Municipal Manager, Jamela Selapyane, has not paid salaries on time since September, citing poor revenue collection.
Mafube’s Equitable Share was withheld in July 2025 after an instruction from the Minister of Finance, Enoch Godongwana. On 13 August 2025, following an MPAC meeting with National Treasury and SALGA, I wrote to the Speaker and the Mayor after Treasury issued a stern warning about the municipality’s continued failure to investigate unauthorised, irregular, and wasteful expenditure, as required by Section 129(1) of the MFMA.
Treasury cautioned that failure to present a compliant work programme and reports by 31 August 2025 would jeopardise Mafube’s December Equitable Share allocation.
On 11 November 2025, an incomplete IUFWE report for 2022/2023 was tabled in Council, again excluding proper investigations. The DA opposed the report, but the majority approved it. As a result, Mafube is once more listed among municipalities whose funds are being withheld for failing to submit the required action plan on UIFWE.
Salary payment is a legal right, not a privilege. The DA has now escalated the matter to provincial CoGTA leadership and the NCOP, Dave McKay and Dr Igor Scheukogel, to secure urgent compliance and ensure that Mafube employees receive the salaries owed to them.