- 25 October 2024
- News & Politics
- 8 min to read
- article 5 of 18
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Piet CroucampContributing editor
SEVERAL non-governmental organisations in South Africa have long been awaiting reports from forensic investigations into poor financial management and corruption, but these then disappear somewhere into oblivion and allow bureaucrats and politicians to avoid accountability. AfriForum's private prosecution unit recently quite rightly made the allegation that Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi and the provincial ANC are criminally dragging such investigations under the rug, but the reality is that this happens at almost every level of government.
I have it today about two reports that had exposed corruption and mismanagement in Johannesburg without any official being held responsible, but unfortunately this phenomenon is the norm and not the exception.
Currently Johannesburgers are biting their nails over the possibility that the city's taps may finally run dry. In fact, most of us already have water restrictions in the morning and sometimes in the evening as well. However, this is merely one of the reasons that Johannesburg is acquiring the aesthetics of a landfill in places.
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Same problems year after year
If you're looking for something to feed your morbid mood over the decay of South Africa's municipalities and metros, read auditor- general Tsakani Maluleke's report on Johannesburg - it's on the internet - and sit down and spew bile with me.
In the report for 2022/23, as in almost every audit over the past 20 years, the financial mismanagement is highlighted in gruesome detail. Nothing is being corrected, despite the AG's recommendations. The same problems and errors occur year after year. In fact, it seems as if the deployed cadres and tenderpreneurs are taking care to perpetuate the mismanagement.
In the case of Johannesburg, the audits refer to irregular procurement practices, particularly with fleet management and massive associated financial losses to the city's taxpayers. There is the now standard finding of fruitless expenditure relating to vehicle hire and maintenance, as well as poor management of landfills. All involve losses amounting to millions of rand.
It's not only the auditor-general reminding us how the politicians and bureaucrats are looting the city, there have been several forensic investigations over the past decades that had come to the exact same conclusion. One Johannesburg metro fest of mismanagement and corruption is the city's garbage collection and landfill management, a function performed by a state-owned enterprise called Pikitup. As a public entity, Pikitup operates within the city's complex network of service delivery businesses. Although this entity, like a typical state-owned enterprise (SOE), has its own management and board, it is ultimately accountable to the municipal government of Johannesburg.
From 2024 the chief executive (managing director) of Pikitup has been Bukelwa Njingolo. The chief financial officer (CFO) is Litshani Matsila. The council is led by Maxwell Nedzamba. A forensic investigation in 2022 claimed that Matsila had a lot of explaining to do over the financial mismanagement of Pikitup. The investigation was carried out by the City of Johannesburg's Group Forensic and Investigative Services (GFIS). The GFIS report has found that Matsila can be implicated in the mismanagement of R1,3 billion worth of fraudulent procurement processes, in particular the choice of 18 companies to supply vehicles to the entity – without the proper procurement procedures being followed.
Probe declared procedurally flawed
Matsila was allegedly, and according to the forensic investigation, not only involved in corruption, but also nepotism. Among others, he was accused of appointing family members to this entity without following the formal application processes. And listen to this: the Pikitup board, led by Njingolo, ultimately rejected the findings of the GFIS investigation because the “procedural processes that led to the report were declared flawed". Litshani Matsila was reappointed to his post and that was the end of the story, R1,3 billion later.
Matsila's case is reminiscent of that of Amanda Nair. She was the CEO of Pikitup from 2012 to 2016. After several investigations, she was accused of corruption and mismanagement, especially in connection with the awarding of multimillion-rand tenders to companies without the prescribed procurement procedures being followed. During her tenure, she was suspended more than once because of these allegations, but sweet nothing came from these investigations. She finally resigned in 2016 without ever being held accountable.
Due to my perpetual curiosity, a report titled “Pikitup Fleet Business Model Review", by a company called Carrus Tshenolo, landed on my desk. The 2022 report really only confirmed the findings of the 2017 report, which hadn't led to anything. Carrus Tshenolo was tasked with investigating the fleet management of Pikitup. The expectation was that it would also be involved in correcting the defects in the system. But quite predictably, the report accumulated dust for so long that Carrus Tshenolo went on to other things.
The municipal management thought it in their interest to pay up for the report and send the authors on their way with a handshake. There were absolutely no consequences for the massive corrupt practices and mismanagement at this entity.
The financial losses that the report identified in detail were largely the result of inept management, systemic corruption and inadequate administrative processes. There was an estimated loss of R24 million due to unnecessary maintenance cost claims for Pikitup's vehicle fleet. And R172 million worth of losses were identified as arising from poor and corrupt management of Pikitup's so-called ad hoc rental vehicles.
Political will was not there
There were illegal expenditures of R18 million in the entity's fire management programme. Expenditure related to misappropriation of landfill equipment amounted to about R10 million. The losses caused by the mismanagement of non-operational vehicles were R1,7 million.
The destruction of value was enormous, but Carrus Fleet Management was convinced they could fix these problems and manage them properly. However, they needed the political will of the city government and Pikitup's board and executive management behind them, and it was not there.
The regularity with which the political regimes of the city change, makes correcting malpractices difficult. Constructive progress is destroyed by shifting elites to make room for the interests of competing cadres and tenderpreneurs. Carrus Fleet Management at one stage set up a training centre as well as a FROCC (Fleet Risk Operations Control Center) with a database and control centre at Robinson Deep.
Robinson Deep is one of Johannesburg's largest landfills. It is in Turffontein and an important part of the city's waste management system. The site is managed by Pikitup and is a general landfill where non-hazardous waste, such as municipal, industrial and construction waste, is dumped.
Officials in the municipality say that Robinson Deep is a nest of corruption. At the turn of one of the city's many political seasons, a new coalition government asked Carrus to finish and leave the scene. The training centre was eventually stripped and destroyed. The person knowing the finer details of these events apparently died suddenly during Covid-19.
Bloody battles for control
Speaking of changing regimes. The bloody battles for control of Gauteng's large metros continue unabated. The outcome of the competition between political parties could hardly have spewed more froth than Kabelo Gwamanda.
A member of the Al Jama-ah party, he served as mayor of Johannesburg between May 2023 and August 2024. His election was supported by a coalition that included the ANC, PA and the EFF. The DA was in a position to uproot this “axis of political deplorables", but despite Corné Mulder of the FF+'s best efforts, refused on the pain of death to enter into an agreement with the Patriotic Alliance's Gayton McKenzie. The city ended up in the arms of the ANC and the EFF and is still there.
Gwamanda was arrested shortly after his exit in October 2024 over his alleged involvement in a fraudulent funeral policy scheme dating back to 2011. Despite these allegations, he had remained in office for 15 months until resigning in August 2024, partly due to pressure from his own political allies. It was common knowledge that the residents of Soweto were spitting blood over a corrupt funeral policy scheme involving the city's mayor, but who cares, the injustice was done to the poorest of the poor.
The current mayor of Johannesburg, since October 2024, has been the ANC's Dada Morero. He was elected on August 16 after Gwamanda's resignation. This is Morero's second term as mayor; he was briefly in that position in 2022 before his election was overturned by the court. There can be little doubt that Morero will do absolutely nothing to disturb the corrupt tenderpreneurs in Johannesburg's supply chains.
Pikitup is ultimately accountable to the municipal government of Johannesburg but does have an independent management and board. Morero will use this “independence" as motivation not to clean up its mess. But the residents of the city know that their exponentially growing taxes only feed the patronage of the cadres and tenderpreneurs and that accountability is not in the interest of the current political management. Well, certainly not as long as executive managers like Bukelwa Njingolo can reject a forensic investigation by declaring invalid the “procedural processes" that had led to damning findings against a CFO such as Litshani Matsila. The sharers and the stealers have something in common.
♦ VWB ♦
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