Africa-Press – South-Africa. Recently, ActionSA, an opposition party established in 2020 by the former Executive Mayor of the City of Johannesburg, Herman Mashaba, announced that it has appointed Xolani Khumalo as its mayoral candidate for the City Ekurhuleni.
The municipality is one of eight Category A municipalities, also known as metros.
In South Africa, a metropolitan municipality refers to a large, single administrative entity that encompasses a major urban centre and its surrounding areas.
This designation means that the entire area, including various towns and cities within it, is governed by one metropolitan municipality. The economy of the City of Ekurhuleni is larger and more diverse than that of many small countries in Africa.
It accounts for nearly a quarter of the economy of the Gauteng Province, the wealthiest province in South Africa which contributes over a third of the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Many of the factories for production of goodsand commodities in South Africa and the broader Southern Africa region are located in the City of Ekurhuleni, which has earned it recognition as “Africa’s workshop”.
Khumalo, who was born in the township of Thembisa, is well-known for his work as the former presenter of “Sizok’thola”, a crime-fighting show that aired on Moja Love.
Khumalo’s work on “Sizok’thola” exposing drug dealers has earned him national acclaim.
He was recently acquitted of charges related to an alleged drug dealer’s death.
There is no question that Khumalo is passionate about the issue of drug abuse in South Africa, and it is indeed a very serious issue. Our country is battling the scourge of substance abuse and drug addiction.
The abuse of drugs such as methamphetamines and opioids has increased in recent years. South Africa was identified in 2022 by Harm Reduction International in its Global State of Harm Reduction report as having become one of the world’ largest methamphetamine markets.
Data indicates that drug addiction is leading to a rise in crime, poverty and health issues. But drug addicts are not the only victims of the proliferation of drugs in South Africa.
Communities suffer just as greatly, for it is they who are tormented and brutalised by addicts, who destroy public infrastructure and commit theft to fund their destructive habit. Thus, Khumalo’s commitment to this cause is not insignificant.
But that Khumalo is a celebrity anti-drug activist is not reason enough for him to be entrusted with the huge responsibility of turning around a municipality that is in effective decline following years of political instability.
The City of Ekurhuleni, like many other municipalities in South Africa, is in a precarious position, with financial management and overall governance stagnating.
The metro is owing billions to service providers, particularly Rand Water and Eskom. It also recently faced significant financial pressures, including a R2.1 billion revenue shortfall.
While there have been improvements in the metro’s financial position, with its cash-on-hand having almost doubled (growing from 11 days in the previous financial year to 21 days for the 2024/2025 financial year), its bank balance having increased to over R1.2 billion from an amount of R615 million in the previous financial year and its investment balances seeing an increase from R245 million in the previous financial year to R672 million in the 2024/2025 financial year, the reality is that these “achievements” mask the real story: that the municipality is, in fact, stagnating and in some cases, regressing.
This becomes evident when a comparative analysis of its current financial position and governance is done, with a temporal scope of just nine years starting in 2016.
In the not-too-distant past, the City of Ekurhuleni was one of the best performing municipalities in the country and was in a very good financial position.
In 2020, the City of Ekurhuleni was identified as the best metro in Gauteng for service delivery in a Gauteng City Region Observatory (GCRO) Customer Satisfaction Survey.
It won two first-place awards for its clean audit outcome and good record-keeping for the 2021/22 financial year. It had, prior to this, maintained consecutive clean audits. But in the 2023/2024 financial year, the municipality received an unqualified audit opinion, which is a regression from its previous clean audits.
While its financial statements were deemed fair and accurate, there were findings regarding irregular expenditure of over R20 million and significant issues ith its supply chain and procurement processes.
Service delivery and public infrastructure in the metro has also been in significant decline. Despite this, the municipality recently returned millions in grant money to the Treasury after failing to spend it, with one of the five grants affected being the very critical Human Settlements Development Plan (HSDG), for which more than R6 million was underspent.
This grant is intended to fund housing and related infrastructure projects that aim to improve household quality. Other affected grants include the HIV/AIDS Grant, the Urban Settlement Development Grant (USDG), the Libraries Plan and the Neighbourhood Development Partnership Grant (NDPG).
It is clear, therefore, that the municipality is in desperate need of a leadership that has an appreciation of governance.
An Executive Authority, a role which Khumalo would assume, is extremely important for the stability and performance of the municipality.
The role of the executive mayor is to provide strategic and political leadership to the municipality, to chair the mayoral committee (which is basically the cabinet at local government level) and to monitor the administration and delivery of municipal services, acting as the central figure in the mayoral executive system of governance.
They identify community needs, recommend development strategies, oversee the annual budget process and promote social and economic development. This is a role that requires necessary skills, experience and qualifications which, despite his popularity, Khumalo simply does not possess.
Some may argue that the critique of Khumalo’s mayorship candidature is no different to the calibre of mayoral leadership that we currently have in our municipalities – and it would not be an incorrect argument.
Indeed, the calibre of mayors and officials in many of the 257 municipalities across the country leaves little to be desired. Over the years, the Auditor-General, the National Treasury and various scholars and institutions have been sounding the alarm on the state of the local government sphere in South Africa, contending that municipalities are in dire straits.
A large percentage of municipalities are in financial distress, with the Auditor-General reporting a significant increase in this issue over the last decade.
The latest audit outcomes indicate that only 16 percent of municipalities have obtained clean audits while the same number have regressed. The most prevalent audit outcome in the last three financial years has been an unqualified audit opinion with findings on performance information and/or compliance.
The Auditor-General stated that “the material findings on performance information mean that their performance reports are not credible while the material findings on compliance signal continued disregard for legislation or significant lapses in control”.
She further went on to state that of the 99 municipalities that received unqualified audit opinions, 71 failed to submit quality financial statements and relied on the audit process to correct the errors identified by the auditor.
The Auditor-General hascorrectly placed the responsibility on poor political leadership, contending that along with municipal managers, mayors and councils also contributed to poor financial management in municipalities.
Even though finances are constrained owing to a number of internal and external factors, mayors, councils and municipalities are displaying little fiscal discipline.
These failures at local government level have given rise to the sentiment that because politicians, in particular, are failing communities, we should look elsewhere for leadership.
Some argue that Khumalo would not be any worse than what we already have, and that given his credentials as an anti-drug activist, he may even be a better option.
While I understand where this frustration is coming from, and recognise that it is rooted in the justified despondency that South Africans are feeling owing to the state of collapse in our governance systems, I do not agree with this thinking
The fact that we have been having incompetent and unsuitable executive authorities in municipalities should not be used as a basis for justifying the rise of celebrity politicians.
It should, instead, be used as a basis to demand competence and to prioritise the professionalisation of the public service, for which a framework has recently been adopted.
To argue that someone without any meaningful experience, skills and qualifications should run a metro on the basis that those who have been running it have not done a good job is to use a very low standard for political leadership.
We can and must, demand better for our municipalities and ourselves than politicians who appeal to the lowest common denominator.
Malaika is a geographer (with expertise in urban geography and water resource governance) and researcher at the Institute for Pan African Thought and Conversation. She is a PhD in Geography candidate at the University of Bayreuth in Germany.
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