A desire to salvage the collapsed Mangaung Metro Municipality has led to various interventions.
The latest endeavour sees Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta), and Pres. Cyril Ramaphosa leading the charge to revive the bankrupt ANC-led municipality.
Strategic engagements with the Free State government’s executive council and the Mangaung council set Dlamini-Zuma’s fact-finding process in motion on Monday (04/04). This continues with a meeting with the business sector tomorrow (07/04).
The climax of engagements will see Ramaphosa addressing the public at the Dr Petrus Molemela Stadium in Bloemfontein on Saturday (09/04).
“Input from the minister’s engagements will be consolidated and responded to as part of the presidential imbizo,” said Lungi Mtshali, national Cogta spokesperson.
“The engagements are meant to highlight challenges and remove blockages to service delivery in line with the District Development Model, which is an approach that enables integrated and responsive planning, implementation and budgeting.”
The seeming futility of the attempts to rescue the municipality in 2019 expedited these efforts by Ramaphosa and Dlamini-Zuma.
Now, more than two years since being placed under administration, the bankrupt municipality is still trapped in the doldrums, struggling to recover its fiscal capacity.
Evidence of this struggle can be seen in the deterioration of service delivery and the metro’s inability to keep up with the revised payment plan.
Owing to the bleak situation, the credit ratings agency Moody’s twice downgraded the municipality’s long-term global scale issuer rating to junk status.
The prolonged administrative problems fuelled a growing wave of public discord and elicited sharp criticism by opposing political parties.
This saw Olly Mlamleli ousted as the executive mayor late in 2020 and Adv. Tankiso Mea sacked as municipal manager in May 2021.
Criticism of the municipality was justified by referring to late auditor-general Kimi Makwetu’s report on the municipality’s financial ruin despite being placed under provincial administration.
