THE ANC is facing the possibility of losing control of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro (NMM) in Port Elizabeth to the Democratic Alliance.
Local government and traditional affairs MEC Mlibo Qoboshiyane made the admission while presenting a report on the state of Eastern Cape municipalities at an ANC meeting with all its 1050 councillors in the province, including those deployed in NMM.
The meeting at the East London International Convention Centre was meant to caution ANC deployees in all 45 municipalities to stop infighting and speed up service delivery.
This follows a damning audit report by the Auditor-General Terrence Nombembe which found that none of the province’s 45 municipalities received a clean audit.
And this was largely due to councillors’ failure to oversee the running of municipalities.
The ANC has control over 44 of the 45 municipal councils as well as all six district municipalities.
In the report, Qoboshiyane took the meeting through records of the past national election results as well as the 2011 local government elections.
He said the records showed that nationally the ANC’s support was decreasing, while the DA’s support was increasing, and this was of concern.
“In the Eastern Cape ANC’s support also decreased from 84.3% in 1994 to 71.3% in 2009.
“More concerning is the Nelson Mandela Metro where the ANC’s support dropped from 51.9% while the DA increased its support from 19.1% to 40.1%.
“Extrapolating this trend to 2014, the ANC could lose the biggest metro,” said Qoboshiyane.
He then presented spending patterns of all conditional grants, including infrastructure grants for housing, roads and provision of water and sanitation.
Although the NMM fared well in other areas Qoboshiyane raised concern about the metro’s spending of its urban settlement development grant.
Of the R592-million it received only 53% had been spent by April 2013.
Although better than spending patterns in Buffalo City Metro (BCM ), which sat at 31% for its R499-million USD grant, the ANC provincial executive member (PEC) cautioned NMM councillors that come 2014 the ANC would suffer.
“What we do in service delivery will have direct impact on how people vote ,” said Qoboshiyane.
Poor workmanship – shoddy work was the order of the day;
l A number of newly built water schemes were not functioning;
l A number of access roads only lasted a few months or a year;
l There was a lack of technical capacity, loss of institutional memory, and an inability to attract competent technical skills result in poor performance by most municipalities; and
l There was also poor planning.
Provincial chairman Phumulo Masualle issued a stern warning saying there was no point in discussing anything.
“Each council must sit down and draft a report to be submitted to their respective ANC regional leadership, on how the situation could be remedied. —
ANC admits DA poses threat in EC
Local government and traditional affairs MEC Mlibo Qoboshiyane made the admission while presenting a report on the state of Eastern Cape municipalities at an ANC meeting with all its 1050 councillors in the province, including those deployed in NMM.
The meeting at the East London International Convention Centre was meant to caution ANC deployees in all 45 municipalities to stop infighting and speed up service delivery.
This follows a damning audit report by the Auditor-General Terrence Nombembe which found that none of the province’s 45 municipalities received a clean audit.
And this was largely due to councillors’ failure to oversee the running of municipalities.
The ANC has control over 44 of the 45 municipal councils as well as all six district municipalities.
In the report, Qoboshiyane took the meeting through records of the past national election results as well as the 2011 local government elections.
He said the records showed that nationally the ANC’s support was decreasing, while the DA’s support was increasing, and this was of concern.
“In the Eastern Cape ANC’s support also decreased from 84.3% in 1994 to 71.3% in 2009.
“More concerning is the Nelson Mandela Metro where the ANC’s support dropped from 51.9% while the DA increased its support from 19.1% to 40.1%.
“Extrapolating this trend to 2014, the ANC could lose the biggest metro,” said Qoboshiyane.
He then presented spending patterns of all conditional grants, including infrastructure grants for housing, roads and provision of water and sanitation.
Although the NMM fared well in other areas Qoboshiyane raised concern about the metro’s spending of its urban settlement development grant.
Of the R592-million it received only 53% had been spent by April 2013.
Although better than spending patterns in Buffalo City Metro (BCM ), which sat at 31% for its R499-million USD grant, the ANC provincial executive member (PEC) cautioned NMM councillors that come 2014 the ANC would suffer.
“What we do in service delivery will have direct impact on how people vote ,” said Qoboshiyane.
Poor workmanship – shoddy work was the order of the day;
l A number of newly built water schemes were not functioning;
l A number of access roads only lasted a few months or a year;
l There was a lack of technical capacity, loss of institutional memory, and an inability to attract competent technical skills result in poor performance by most municipalities; and
l There was also poor planning.
Provincial chairman Phumulo Masualle issued a stern warning saying there was no point in discussing anything.
“Each council must sit down and draft a report to be submitted to their respective ANC regional leadership, on how the situation could be remedied. —
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