Pretoria - The City of Tshwane, under the political leadership of the multiparty coalition government, will “fight tooth and nail” should the administration of the metro be taken over by the Gauteng provincial government.
Executive mayor Cilliers Brink yesterday said his administration was prepared “to prevent Tshwane from being placed under the administration and going through the same disastrous abuse of power”.
The abuse of power in question was experienced during the tenure of administrators appointed by the provincial government to run the metro in 2019.
Brink was addressing journalists at Tshwane House, where he said former mayor Randall Williams had discovered a deficit in excess of R4 billion after the administrators were ejected from the metro. The administrators’ appointments ended after the decision to place the metro under administration was nullified by the Constitutional Court.
Brink’s comment was made after the City council last week failed to pass an adjustment budget for 2022/2023 in spite of the extension it was granted to April 14 by Finance MEC Jacob Mamabolo.
The situation has since placed the metro at risk of being put under administration as one of the options articulated by co-operative governance and traditional affairs, e-government, research and development, MEC Mzi Khumalo said in a TV interview.
Khumalo cited a need to intervene in the metro through relevant legislation, expressing concern that service delivery could be affected as a result of failed efforts to pass the adjustment budget.
He indicated that he would engage with Mamabolo to establish the most appropriate course of action within the ambit of the Constitution and other relevant applicable legislation that the province can take to remedy the situation in Tshwane.
Contrary to what Khumalo said about the likely negative implications of failure to pass an adjustment budget on service delivery, Brink said the adjustment budget was a tool to adjust the City’s spending priorities, but “it is not like we won’t have money”.
“The big risk is we would incur unauthorised expenditure because the adjustment budget hasn’t been passed.”
Brink said he had written to Mamabolo to seek his approval to submit the adjustment budget in a month’s time “when I know we would have the majority to pass it”.
The multiparty coalition partners failed to pass the adjustment budget because they were short of one vote.
They needed at least 108 votes to pass the adjustment budget. The coalition, of the DA, ActionSA, the FF+, the IFP and ACDP, only had 107 votes. They had banked on sole Good political party councillor Sarah Mabotja to vote in favour of the budget, but she withdrew her support in the council on Friday.
DA councillor Francois Bekker resigned recently, and a coalition member from the FF+, Grandi Theunissen, was on sick leave.
During a media briefing, Brink also dropped a bombshell that the metro owed the South African Revenue Service (Sars) about R4.7bn in outstanding VAT and penalties stemming from undisclosed liabilities of the ill-fated Peu smart meter electricity prepaid contract.
The irregularly awarded contract was entered into in 2013 with Peu Capital Partners for the roll-out of the meters. The ANC’s Dr Kgosientsho “Sputla” Ramokgopa, the new Minister in the Presidency Responsible for Electricity, was the mayor of Tshwane at the time, from 2010 to 2016.
“In the past three years, or in the past year, we have learnt we owe Sars outstanding VAT payments on this unlawful contract for 2012 to 2015, and in the meantime, penalties and interest had accrued on this account. Currently, the City is paying R91 million a month on this bill, a massive squeeze,” Brink said.
Pretoria News