This as the Minister of Cooperative Governance (CoGTA), Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, visits the province today where she is expected to assess the state of affairs and engage with premier Job Mokgoro. Her visit comes a few weeks after Mokgoro announced, during his state of the province address (SOPA), that the national government-run administration will come to an end by August 2020. The province was placed under administration by President Cyril Ramaphosa after a wave of violent protests over a lack of basic service delivery issues of rampant corruption in provincial departments and ailing municipalities.

The woes in many of the ailing municipalities in the province, of which some are also under administration from, will also be expected to be in the spotlight. Some of these municipalities have failed to collect revenue for services rendered, worth billions of rands not collected.

This, despite a clear warning and instruction from the auditor-general (AG), Kimi Makwetu, that failure to collect and deal with issues such as corruption and fraud, will lead to the deterioration of infrastructure and ultimately lead to a lack of service delivery.

A report by the National Treasury in November 2019 labelled, amongst others, the Matlosana Local Municipality as one of the worst municipalities in terms of financial records.

Treasury flagged the municipality as having a bad cash coverage ratio and says the municipality fails to raise its revenue. The treasury report said the municipality could only collect a mere 51% of revenue instead of the earmarked 95% from the first quarter.

The Select Committee on Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Chairperson, China Dodovu, expressed concern at the R2,7 billion owed to the municipality.

Meanwhile, the office of Mokgoro says Dlamini-Zuma will today also conduct stakeholder engagements in the province to assess progress on the intervention in the province since the establishment of the IMTT. The IMTT will engage with the Premier and Provincial Executive, as well as with the Speaker Susan Dantjie, and [members of the] Provincial Legislature.

OFM News