Tshwane’s DA mayor vows to ‘restore financial controls’

• Cilliers Brink was elected with 109 votes, beating COPE councillor Ofentse Moalusi, who got 102 votes

Newly elected Tshwane executive mayor and DA councillor Cilliers Brink says his administration will focus on restoring the metro’s broken financial controls, which resulted in it racking up more than R10bn in irregular expenditure.

“We have to get control of Tshwane’s finances, and bring our spending in line with what the city can realistically hope to collect. This is as important a task as responding to the concerns of the auditor-general, and restoring the financial controls that have systematically been broken down or have never existed,” Brink said after his election on Tuesday.

He was elected with 109 votes, beating his close rival, COPE councillor Ofentse Moalusi, who received 102 votes.

Brink said that in the past three years, a number of factors including “excessive salary increases negotiated outside collective bargaining, and out of proportion to what has been granted in metros of similar size and means”; and the Covid-19 lockdown had had a “devastating effect on the city’s financial position, and the path of recovery on which we had embarked in the last decade”.

The metro came under fire from unions in August 2020 following its decision to withhold salaries of more than 7,000 unverified workers. The decision came two weeks after Tshwane agreed to implement a benchmarking agreement signed with the SA Municipal Workers’ Union and the Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union, which was set to cost the city R300m.

The agreement was meant to put Tshwane employees’ salaries on the same footing as those of their counterparts in

SA’s seven other metros.

Brink said the scourge of load-shedding and the “unlawful” intervention by the Gauteng provincial government to place the metro under administration for seven months during the lockdown period, which left the metro with a R4bn deficit, added to the city’s financial woes.

“To restore the balance between incomes and expenditures, Tshwane will have to make difficult decisions that we no longer have the luxury to avoid,” the mayor said.

Brink and the metro’s mayoral spokesperson, Sipho Stuurman, did not respond immediately to questions sent to them.

Tshwane had been without a political head for almost three weeks after former COPE councillor Murunwa Makwarela resigned on March 10 following the discovery that he had submitted a fraudulent court rehabilitation order to city manager Johann Mettler after his insolvency proceedings.

Makwarela, who was elected mayor on February 28 to replace Randall Williams, is said to have outstanding insolvency issues dating back to 2016. According to the constitution, an individual who is declared an unrehabilitated insolvent cannot hold public office.

Williams’ resignation came after the DA-led multiparty coalition — which included ActionSA, the ACDP, the IFP, COPE and Freedom Front Plus — issued a joint statement in August 2022 agreeing to an independent probe after allegations that Williams interfered in a R26bn energy investment proposal for the metro. The unsolicited bid was for refurbishing the city-owned Rooiwal and Pretoria West power stations.

Randall also came under heavy criticism after auditorgeneral Tsakani Maluleke’s report on the metro’s 2021/22 financial year said it did not have adequate systems for identifying and disclosing all irregular expenditure, which the metro put at more than R10.4bn.

The political instability of coalitions in the Gauteng metros echoes concerns by the SA Local Government Association that service delivery in SA’s economic heartland was deteriorating, as political parties battled for controls of local councils and municipalities.

DA Gauteng leader Solly Msimanga

said the party, like its coalition partners, had full confidence in Brink’s ability to turn around the municipality.

“The lingering effects of reckless lockdown policies, unlawful ANC interventions in the city from other spheres of government, poor financial decisions, and the continuous and escalating impact of prolonged stage 6 load-shedding, has caused significant hardships for the city, especially with regard to its devastating impact on Tshwane’s finances,” said Msimanga, a former Tshwane mayor.

“The DA in Gauteng calls on all parties in the Tshwane city council to put effective, delivery focused government above party political games and stunts. The city’s residents deserve nothing less,” he said.

ANC Tshwane chair Eugene Modise could not be reached immediately for comment.

EFF Tshwane regional chair Obakeng Ramabodu said Brink’s election signified the “return of Tshwane residents to another seven years of poor service delivery under the multiparty coalition”. He described Brink’s election as a setback, saying the red berets would hold him accountable and demand “concrete steps to address audit findings and restore service delivery in the municipality”.

Brink, a University of Pretoria law graduate, is no stranger to the municipality, having served as a councillor in 2011 and group corporate and shared services member of the mayoral committee from 2016 to 2019.

Brink then moved to parliament and represented the DA as national spokesperson and as a member of the co-operative governance & traditional affairs portfolio committee.

He said a municipality existed for the residents’ benefit, its local community and generations to come, stressing that service delivery by the metro could not be compromised.

“If we do that, we will simply deepen the deficit of trust and the deficit of money that we currently suffer,” he said.

“What has happened in our politics, and in this council chamber, in the past three weeks has been deeply unfortunate, and I do hope we’ve reached a turning point.”

TSHWANE WILL HAVE TO MAKE DIFFICULT DECISIONS WE NO LONGER HAVE THE LUXURY TO AVOID