Fighting the scourge of corruption and putting SA's biggest-budget municipality on a sound financial trajectory top the list of priorities of newly elected Johannesburg mayor Jolidee Matongo.
Matongo, who was elected unopposed during a special council meeting in Johannesburg on Tuesday, said he will pursue good governance to rid the metro of often highlighted ills of unauthorised, irregular, and fruitless expenditure, and to expedite service delivery.
The country's richest municipality, which contributes nearly 20% to GDP and about 40% to the economy of Gauteng, was left without a mayor following the passing of Geoff Makhubo who succumbed to Covid-19 complications on July 9.
Soon after his election on Tuesday, Matongo talked tough, warning the city’s 30,000 employees that if they did not deliver services to the people they would be fired.
“What we will be doing without fear or favour [is that] those assigned the responsibility to deliver services do so, if people don’t spend money, they will have to go and sit at home, if we have to meet them at labour court we will have to do so,” said Matongo, a descendant of a Zimbabwean migrant and was born in Soweto 46 years ago.
A member of the ANC regional executive committee (REC), where he has served as the party's Joburg regional spokesperson for eight years, Matongo joined the liberation struggle at the age of 13 years while still a learner at Orlando West High School in Soweto.
As finance member of the mayoral committee in Makhubo’s mayoral committee, Matongo unveiled a budget of R73.3bn for 2021/2022 in May. Makhubo’s death occurred just as the city had passed its budget and the integrated development plan (IDP), a blueprint guiding the metro’s framework for development.
“We will ensure that plans are implemented and that the budget is spent. Our administration won’t be in the office, we will be on our work-suits every day, on the ground, to deal with issues people are experiencing,” said Matongo.
He hit out at the fact that the metro failed to spend R175m in the last financial year, which was set aside to help residents experiencing food insecure in the city.
In March 2020 the metro announced that it had lost R617m of service delivery grants back to the Treasury “over the last three financial years, due to a failure to spend”.
“We only have six months to go [before the term ends]; there is no confusion what needs to be done. The IDP has been approved by council and the budget has been allocated,” Matongo emphasised.
The mayor explained that his priorities included achieving financial stability in the municipality. “How do we ensure that the city is financially stable and that it meets its obligations? We buy water from Rand Water and electricity from Eskom. It’s not possible to achieve them [obligations] without financial resources.”
He said good governance is critical because “you can have all the resources, but if they are not used accordingly, you will have [to deal with] unauthorised, irregular, and fruitless expenditure ... [so] it’s also important to deal with corruption, malfeasance and maladministration and all of that”.
Tabling the consolidated report on local government audit outcomes for the 2019/2020 financial year in parliament in June, auditor-general Tsakani Maluleke said the financial position of just over a quarter of the 257 municipalities in the country was so dire that there was significant doubt that they will be able to continue meeting their obligations in the near future.
The number of clean municipal audits declined from 33 to 27, while fruitless and wasteful expenditure amounted to R3.47bn. Irregular expenditure amounted to R26bn with widespread non-compliance with supply chain management legislation being a significant contributor.
Matongo said the ANC and its coalition partners will have a meeting on Tuesday night to finalise the list of who should be appointed into his 10-member mayoral committee. While Matongo said he was not looking at changing the mayoral committee that served under Makhubo “in its entirety”, skills, qualifications and experience will be considered the most.
“There should not be a lot of changes,” said Matongo, who holds a diploma in public management and development (Technikon SA); a B-Tech degree in public management (Unisa), and a postgraduate diploma in management from Milpark Business College. He is pursuing a master’s degree in public management with private learning institution Mancosa.
Makhubo ran the metro with the help of coalition partners, called the government of local unity [GLU], including the African Independent Congress (AIC), Al Jama-ah, COPE, the IFP, the Patriotic Alliance and the UDM.
DA caucus leader Leah Knott said the official opposition party abstained from the nomination process. “That was purely because we are so close to the local government elections, we are putting all our focus on the municipal elections and getting majority in council,” she said.
“We will hold this current administration accountable.”
UPDATE: August 10 2021
This story has been updated with new information throughout.
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