Tshwane taking steps to tighten controls, following AG report – speaker

A special meeting of the Tshwane metro council scheduled for Wednesday 15 February has been cancelled, hours before it was due to start, amid confusion about the recent resignation of Democratic Alliance (DA) mayor Randall Williams.

On Monday Williams handed in his resignation, in the wake of an adverse opinion issued by Auditor-General Tsakani Maluleke on Tshwane’s financial statements for 2022/23. Maluleke expressed doubt about the metro’s ability to continue as a going concern and said the statements are not a fair reflection of the financial affairs of the metro.

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Williams initially indicated that his resignation would take effect at midnight on Monday, but then “amended” his resignation in a follow-up letter to take effect at the end of February. He further took leave and indicated that member of the mayoral committee for finance Peter Sutton would act in his place until the end of the month.

Sources within the council indicated that Williams’ rescheduling of his resignation might have been done under pressure from fellow members of the mayoral committee. Whenever a mayor resigns, his mayoral committee ceases to exist and by staying on for another two weeks, they are assured of a full month’s salary for February.

Chop and change

At a media briefing on Tuesday afternoon, Tshwane speaker Dr Marunwa Makwarela had told journalists that a special council meeting called for Wednesday morning to correct an earlier erroneous council decision to adopt a report from the independent audit and performance committee (APC), would go ahead, even though the preparations to table the correct version of the APC report would not be completed in time. He said the meeting would instead be used to put both resignation letters to council to decide on the way forward.

However, on Wednesday morning he said Williams was in his rights to amend his resignation and that it takes effect at the end of the month. He was however still critical of Sutton’s purported appointment to act in Williams’ place, stating that only council can appoint someone to act as mayor.

According to Makwarela, the mayoral committee would sit on Wednesday to process the correct APC report, but he was unable to say who would lead the mayoral committee and conceded that should it be led by Sutton, without any proper authorisation, the decisions taken would be vulnerable to legal challenge.

Makwarela also announced the steps he is taking to tighten controls following the AG’s report. These include:

• All financial information including the annual financial statements must be approved by the mayoral committee before the AG starts the audit process and the process followed by the mayoral committee to ensure the statements were valid, will be reviewed.
• He wants a report on the composition, skills and competence of the city’s audit committee and to review the audit committee charter;
• A review of all the governance structures in the city “as they have failed”; as well as
• Additional measures to ensure effective oversight over all financial information presented to council for approval.

 

Makwarela said the regular monthly council meeting is scheduled for 23 February and he is still consulting political parties about the scheduling of a special meeting to elect a new mayor.

The true reason for the cancellation of the special council meeting on Wednesday may be to prevent a situation where councillors insist on an immediate mayoral election and to give parties more time to get their ducks in a row.

Coalition politics

Makwarela represents Congress of the People (Cope) in council, which is one of the parties in the current government multi-party coalition. The others are the DA, ActionSA, Freedom Front Plus (FF+), Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP).

The coalition currently has barely 50% of the council seats, which makes it vulnerable to being booted out if opposition parties work together and can gather a few more votes from among the councillors representing the coalition parties.

Beyond the election of a new mayor and the scheduled monthly council meeting, another special council meeting is expected early in March to deal with three motions from minority parties, presumably with the support of the ANC and EFF.

These motions include two of no confidence in the chief whip Christo van den Heever and the chairpersons of the s.79 oversight committees and one to institute disciplinary action against city manager Johann Mettler.