Note to Broadcasters: Please find linked soundbites in English and Afrikaans by CJ Steyl MPL.
The DA in North West has today written to the National Minister of Cooperative Governance, Velenkosini Hlabisa, the Minister of Finance, Enoch Godongwana, and President Cyril Ramaphosa, requesting them to urgently place the Ditsobotla Local Municipality under Section 139(7) national administration to restore service delivery and good governance. See letter here.
Despite about 30 Section 139 North West provincial government interventions since 2000, which ultimately led to the dissolvement of the Ditsobotla Council in 2022, and the current efforts by the provincial department of Cooperative Governance, Human Settlements and Traditional Affairs (COGHSTA) to stabilise the financial situation of the municipality, these efforts have been ineffective largely due to ANC political instability and factionalism within the Council and a reluctance to root out corruption.
Repeated engagements by the provincial and national portfolio committees of COGTA and SCOPA have not yielded any positive impact. The Ditsobotla Local Municipality would appear before these committees in parliament and the Provincial Legislature, agree to implement committee recommendations and resolutions, only to discard these commitments the minute these committees adjourn.
The Ditsobotla Local Municipality has collapsed, is completely bankrupt, with its liabilities exceeding its assets. Service providers cannot be paid and refuse to respond to job orders. Water and electricity infrastructure has completely collapsed, leaving large sections of the municipality without any water and/or electricity supply for weeks on end, never mind the inability of the administration to respond to other service delivery needs.
Ditsobotla residents are desperate and angry, seeing regular violent protest action take place, leaving other communities to not only endure the terrible situation created by the inability of the municipality to deliver services, but having also to endure the consequences of further damage to infrastructure which compounds the general misery residents are forced to contend with.
The DA has requested the President, and the Ministers of COGTA and Finance, to take control of the situation, to conduct an independent financial assessment of the municipality, craft a funded and implementable recovery plan to stabilise the municipality and administer its affairs towards servicing residents while an independent skills audit of all senior and middle management officials as well as a forensic financial audit is conducted.
All municipal officials in senior and middle management who are identified to either lack the necessary skills, qualifications, and experience to perform their functions must be removed from office. Municipal officials and political office bearers who are identified in any corrupt financial activities must be prosecuted and the necessary asset forfeiture processes initiated.
These interventions are the only real hope for positive change in Ditsobotla. Dissolving the Council yet again will not solve any of the structural issues that continue to persist, any such consideration must be rejected in its entirety.
The time has come for decisive action to end the decades long rot in Ditsobotla and restore the municipality to its former glory as an economic agri-economic hub in the North West.