I was stunned when the North West provincial government seconded a former city manager from the troubled Kgetlengrivier local municipality to the cash-strapped Ramotshere Moiloa local municipality.
I was flabbergasted that the Ramotshere Moiloa township appointee had helped bring down another township.
As if that weren’t enough, a city manager from the Ramotshere Moiloa municipality, whose contract expired earlier this month, was seconded to the local municipality of Rustenburg.
There is a pattern of rotation of these municipal administrators from one municipality to another.
Why is the appointment of municipal administrators important? It matters because they are the heads of the municipal administration and execute the resolutions of the council. Unfortunately, too many city managers allow serious wrongdoing.
Although we consider municipal administrators to be useless, they are useful tools for their political directors because they help to enrich these politicians who are mostly in the provincial or national government. In this case, the MEC responsible for local government makes its choice or the party’s choice depending on who is more powerful.
The ANC recently elected its provincial leadership and we are already seeing changes from the provincial to the local level of government. Nono Maloyi, president of the North West ANC, rose to become a member of the provincial legislature last week. This allows him to be appointed as the province’s premier to replace Bushy Maape, who is not really known in the ANC sections in the province.
Maloyi is using his political capital to entrench his faction in provincial and local government. The appointment or secondment of these city managers will help boost their faction at the ANC’s December conference in terms of awarding bids to the companies of their choice, which will surely pay or bribe their top politicians who appointed them to do the dirty work. .
Northwestern mayors, speakers and councilors from several municipalities who do not support Maloyi’s faction, known as the N12, are backing the court request seeking to overturn the ANC’s provincial conference, which elected Maloyi and his provincial executive committee. The court’s verdict will have legal and political implications for the ANC conference.
They are also betting that the conference will re-elect Cyril Ramaphosa to safeguard his political future. Supporters of the N12, which runs the province, also fear the outcome of the court and the ANC conference.
These appointments or secondments by the provincial government have nothing to do with the people they are meant to serve; It is about political interests.
We will see the decline of the ANC in all the North West townships in future elections. This decline stems from the party’s internal disputes, its poor performance in the municipalities, and the lack of governance in the province.
The growth of parties such as the Democratic Alliance, Economic Freedom Fighters, Freedom Front Plus and independent candidates in the province comes as a result of infighting in the ANC, which is set to widen after the ANC conference next month. The growth of these parties does not necessarily come from your hard work; the ANC is responsible for its growth.
Those who now vote for parties other than the ANC are not a majority. Many people take “gross leave” and abstain from voting or form civic organizations to fight the party they once loved and grew up with.
Kenneth Mokgatlhe is a freelance writer and journalist.
