Note to Editors: Find attached soundbites in English by DA North West Spokesperson on Cooperative Governance, Human Settlements and Traditional Affairs (COGHSTA), Freddy Sonakile.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) in North West will submit written questions to the MEC for the Department of Cooperative Governance, Human Settlements and Traditional Affairs (COGHSTA), Mmoloki Cwaile, to request the database where Administrators are appointed from to failed municipalities.
This follows the appointment of Mr Gobakwang Moatshe as the Administrator to the Ditsobotla Local Municipality, despite the fact that he was implicated in a report following an investigation by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) in 2018.
The report on North West municipalities commissioned in terms of Proclamation No. R72 of 2008, implicated Mr Moatshe in the irregular appointment of officials, maladministration, nepotism, fruitless and wasteful expenditure, unauthorised expenditure and non-compliance with Council resolutions. He was the Municipal Manager of Moses Kotane Local Municipality at the time.
Although the DA agrees that Ditsobotla Local Municipality, like most municipalities in North West, is in a dilapidated state and in need of intervention, appointing Administrators with a history of maladministration and political ties, merely exacerbates the existing state of regress that municipalities are in.
In September 2019, the DA posed an oral question pertaining to the selection process and appointment of Administrators to Premier Job Mokgoro during a plenary sitting at the North West Provincial Legislature, to which he responded that the Department of COGHSTA makes use of a “database of professionals and experts in various fields that are appointed after a thorough process of shortlisting, CV and qualification verification, vetting and selection.”
The DA is of the view that it is in the public’s interest that this database be made known. If the process of electing these Administrators is indeed as “thorough” as indicated by Premier Mokgoro, the MEC must explain how individuals such as Mr Moatshe qualified for the position.
The disastrous state of North West municipalities can no longer be ignored and as long as ANC factionalism, cadre deployment and financial misconduct are left unchecked, the shameless depravation of citizens’ basic Human Rights will continue.
Citizens of North West can exercise their democratic right on 27 October 2021 to bring an end to the failed governance of the ANC and vote for a DA government that will ensure corruption free good governance and quality service delivery to all, like we do in DA-governed municipalities in the Western Cape and in Midvaal in Gauteng.