President Cyril Ramaphosa rightly drew a hard line against errant councillors and municipal officials in Boksburg at the weekend, outlining principles he could use in managing his cabinet.
On Saturday, opening a special national executive committee (NEC) meeting on local government, Ramaphosa said the ANC should be “firm” in holding local government representatives and officials “to a much higher standard of performance and accountability”.
“In the end we should be firm about enforcing accountability and consequence management. The implementation of these processes must be adhered to strictly and result in engendering a culture of high performance for all of us,” Ramaphosa said.
“Where anyone who is deployed or appointed abuses the people’s resources through malfeasance or corruption, they must be removed from the roles they play.
“Where anyone deliberately does not execute tasks they are expected to execute in the interests of our people they should know that they will be removed. This is the true meaning of accountability and consequent management.
“The ANC must lead from the front to inculcate this culture in our work and structures,” Ramaphosa said.
It is the president who should lead from the front for his actions are likely to filter down to mayors and councillors.
Accountability is crucial to restoring the functioning and standing of SA’s municipalities, but their rot and neglect simply reflect what is happening in the other two spheres of government — provincial and national.
Ministers and officials splurging on overseas trips amid constrained public finances is one, and this area is desperately in need of leadership and accountability.
Allegations that ministers, officials and even the deputy president are splashing out on expensive, luxury international trips have been growing. This is after finance minister Enoch Godongwana was on the brink of imposing an increase in VAT due to the state’s constrained fiscal capacity.
SA has clear guidelines for ministerial travel issued by the Treasury back in 2018 and the department of public service and administration has issued guidelines for officials and public servants.
Despite this, the Sunday Times has reported that Deputy President Paul Mashatile has spent about R8m in travel expenses on official trips for him and his spouse since taking office last year. ActionSA has found ministers have spent R273m since the government of national unity (GNU) cabinet was formed in July 2024.
A subsequent report takes the cake: the Sunday Times reported that a week into her new job, social development deputy director-general Sizakele Magangoe splashed out more than R1m on a trip to New York, spending almost R200,000 on flights, clocking up R419,000 in transfers and R40,000 in travel and subsistence while staying at one of Manhattan’s swankiest (and costliest) hotels for more than two weeks.
Social development minister Sisi Tolashe also travelled to New York — in fact, the government delegation from across departments attending the UN women’s summit totalled 82 — all paid for by tax payers. Worse, the newspaper battled to get the government to disclose exactly how much the government spent on sending such a large delegation to the event.
Quoted by the weekly, Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, said the president approved only ministerial travel and it was up to ministers to approve travel for their officials.
The report in the Sunday Times, in which the presidency commented, appeared more than two weeks ago. This week, the Daily Maverick reported that Tolashe had appointed an inexperienced 22-year-old connected to a senior official in her department as her chief of staff, commanding a salary of R1.4m a year.
Meanwhile, Tolashe was evasive when asked questions about the pricey junket attended by officials in her department and has suspended her former spokesperson, Lumka Olifant, over the alleged leaking of the reports. In the meantime, there is silence from Ramaphosa and his office over the travel excesses of members of his own cabinet or in their departments.
It is difficult to see mayors of the country’s municipalities paying heed to his call for prudent management of finances and a sharp acceleration in holding officials and councillors to account for wrongdoing and, crucially, misusing public funds.
It is no wonder Johannesburg mayor Dada Morero is perfectly at ease appointing and retaining as a member of the mayoral committee (MMC) a person who was convicted of a crime and accused of being part of the construction mafia.
MMC for shared services Sithembiso Zungu has been named in court papers as part of a “business forum” disrupting key projects in Johannesburg presumably to extract a cut of the tender. He was also sentenced to two months in prison for contempt of court.
Ramaphosa’s words on Saturday were simply empty, given the state of accountability in his own executive across to the country’s most economically vital cities. It was all hot air.
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