Africa-Press – South-Africa. The grounding of the City of Johannesburg’s fleet this week is a direct result of irregular contracts, corrupt officials, and political interference, writes Leah Knott.
Most residents of Johannesburg have looked on in horror as images of the City of Johannesburg’s vehicles being recalled by Avis and Afrirent have circulated on social media. This has been blamed on non-payment. This is just not true. It is a false narrative peddled by the Coalition of
Corruption under Cllr Dada Morero. This is not a matter of budget.
In short, the grounding of the fleet this week is a direct result of irregular contracts, corrupt officials, and political interference, of which the most recent example was the Speaker, Councillor Colleen Makhubele, refusing to allow the fleet report to be tabled at the October Council sitting. This, in turn, delayed our ability to put emergency measures in place to keep the fleet in place while we investigate the current tender and await the outcome of a court process.
The history of the City’s fleet issues precedes the first DA-led coalition government that assumed office in 2016. We inherited a system of leasing our entire fleet at exorbitant costs through contracts that received endless extensions and deviations. The worst thing that we inherited was the fact that the City had no proper fire engines – we’re talking about the large fire trucks that we all know are essential to fire-fighting, not the small support vehicles.
Heart of corruption
Our fleet today consists of a number of contracts that cover both permanent and leased vehicles. There is the specialised fleet, which are the fire engines (known as the Red Fleet), and the waste collection trucks (the Pikitup fleet), and the non-specialised fleet, which includes the JMPD vans, City Power trucks, Joburg Water bakkies, and any vehicle that carries a City logo. There are also the contracts to maintain the permanent fleet, since the City long ago lost all capacity to maintain its own vehicles. One sadly has to look no further than our facility at Hamburg which used to have a vehicle workshop, but due to years of negligence and criminal activity, has been stripped bare.
The sad lesson that was learnt from 2018-19 is that the fleet contracts are at the heart of corruption in the City. The contract with TFM for fire engines was thrown out by the courts, and the non-specialised fleet contract with Avis and Afrirent was declared entirely irregular by National Treasury, which ordered the ANC administration in 2020 to cancel the contract and conduct a forensic investigation.
None of this happened. An excellent investigation by AmaBhungane followed the trail of money from Afrirent to several senior political leaders, but again no action was taken. The City conducted an internal investigation into the non-specialised contract, but this only concluded that there had been no political interference by the DA-led executive. Subsequent forensic investigations have implicated a number of City officials.
When we assumed office late in 2021, I found these forensic investigations with serious findings against officials gathering dust, with the implicated parties in office managing the fleet contracts and preparing to go out on tender for new fleet contracts, despite charges being laid with the Hawks. Two of the officials in the fleet department are former political advisors to the previous MMC, who were appointed under deeply suspicious circumstances.
Over the course of this year, I have pushed for implicated officials to face the music, and several disciplinary hearings are near completion. We have kept following up with the various case we’ve opened, and I’m assured that the Hawks investigation is near completion. I feel like most South Africans who are frustrated watching the fight against corruption move slower than continental drift.
From the start of the year, I have been tracking the various fleet issues and every week, I have been receiving updates and working on resolving this. I was inspired by the action taken by my colleague in the City of Tshwane, MMC Wakelin, who has overseen a complete re-evaluation of fleet management, with a projected saving of R270 million as they move to a hybrid fleet management option. While we would love to emulate this approach, it requires long-term strategy and planning, which we have only just been able to start, but it is in the pipeline along with a review of several other policies. We have already made some inroads with buying our own specialised vehicles – especially waste collection trucks and fire engines.
When we were illegally removed from office for the three weeks in October, it was revealing that the main priority of the ANC was to push through a R2 billion tender for the non-specialised fleet. The Avis and Afrirent tender was on its most recent extension, which National Treasury was still railing against, and this was due to expire on 31 October 2022. All the delays and excuses that I’d been listening to during the year suddenly vanished, and the tender was pushed through.
Thankfully the court restored us to office and we were able to catch the contract in time. Naturally, I heard the typical excuses: sign or we will be without fleet, the contract expires at the end of the week. This is the standard strategy: back the politicians into a corner through deliberate delays and then we have to accept the option being presented or risk disaster. In this case the disaster was having our vehicles taken back by the service providers.
Process must be clean and beyond reproach
I was firm on this matter: no tender will go through unless I am full satisfied that the process is clean and above reproach. The National Treasury investigation that was ordered in 2020 was still not finalised, several forensic investigations were still being implemented, and there was a court challenge to the current tender from one of the bidders, which has been set down for 22 November 2022. Our only option was to extend the contract (not ideal) while we waited for the investigations and court challenge to conclude. I would rather have this less-than-ideal short-term option than a long-term catastrophic option for the City.
We approached Council for approval on this short-term solution, and I thus wrote to the Speaker to inform her of the urgency of this item and request that the Council consider it on 27 October 2022. She rejected it outright, claiming that she couldn’t see the urgency. Over two weeks this went back and forth at programming with the Speaker as well as opposition parties while I tried to argue that the City’s non-specialised fleet was at risk of being recalled by the service providers.
Sadly, this happened. Not because of non-payment. We have the money to pay for our fleet services in full. It happened because
of the constant struggle to gain control of the City’s money – residents’ money
– by the Coalition of Corruption. The Speaker bent the rules every way possible to accommodate her new political masters, and they need to take accountability for placing the City in this corner.
Meanwhile, the City has made provision to extend the contract with Avis and Afrirent to keep our fleet in place, but we await final sign-off from the Acting City Manager following a final meeting of the Executive Adjudication Committee on Wednesday night. My promise to the residents of Johannesburg is that I will do everything in my power to avoid disaster. Under the guidance of our Executive Mayor, Cllr Mpho Phalatse, the Multi-Party Government will never allow any tender through that does not meet the highest standards for clean and honest governance.
– Cllr Leah Knott, MMC for Group Corporate and Shared Services in the City of Johannesburg.
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