SHIRLEY DE VILLIERS: A million and a half ways to fleece the taxpayer

Now, here’s a cool job if you can get it.

R1.5m a year in exchange for reading and replying to e-mails on behalf of new Amathole mayor Nceba Ndikinda, “scanning the circumstances and environments the executive mayor getting involved with [sic]”, advising him on “aspects relating to politics and socioeconomic aspects that may have an impact on political scenery” and “co-ordinating and overseeing information about places/countries to be visited by the executive mayor”.

Oh, and prioritising issues for the mayor’s attention – when he’s not off on some international jaunt, one assumes.

Who cares that the R1m-R1.5m annual package for an entirely superfluous position is a whopping 50 times the income of the average Amathole family? Certainly, the municipality doesn’t.

The government’s own figures show that the average household in the Amathole district municipality, near the Eastern Cape’s Buffalo City metro, brings in just R30,000 a year. About 76% of the population lives in poverty. And, in 2018, a measly 30% of working-age people there had jobs.

It’s not just the residents, either. The municipality itself is all but bankrupt. In fact, it’s so mired in debt that it already spends one-third of this year’s funds settling last year’s arrears, if the most recent municipal audit report is anything to go by. And for two years now, it’s had to occasionally rely on its bank overdraft facility to pay its monster R65m monthly wage bill.

Good news for the bank; less so for the unfortunate ratepayer.

Profligate and proud of it

Not that the authorities are having any sleepless nights over their wanton spending of other people’s money. As Amathole spokesperson Nonceba Madikizela-Vuso told the Daily Dispatch, the adviser position isn’t new – “thus it has no more bearing on the municipal finances than other positions”.

It’s a common refrain in Amathole: it’s already in the budget, so it doesn’t matter.

Back in December 2019, for example – just two months after Amathole had eaten into its overdraft to foot its wage bill – it reportedly splurged almost R60,000 on a two-night year-end party (R16,000 for food and drinks; R43,000 for accommodation).

Municipal manager Thandekile Mnyimba’s dismissive response to the Daily Dispatch: the event was budgeted for. “This is nothing new,” he said, “we’re going to do it again next year.”

Mnyimba would have us believe that Amathole is mired in debt because his predecessor, in 2013, had upgraded the municipality from a category 6 to a category 7 municipality. And there’s some merit to that. The recategorisation pushed municipal salaries almost on par with those of metros.

As the municipality’s annual report notes, Mnyimba himself earns a pay package of about R2.4m a year. To put that in context: a provincial premier’s package is reported to be R2.2m; Deputy President David Mabuza’s is R2.8m.

The recategorisation also meant an additional – and entirely unnecessary – 900 positions could be filled, bringing the staff complement to more than 1,600. Hence the R780m-odd annual wage bill.

And yet it took years for the municipality to rescind the decision: it waited for a judicial review – finalised only in August this year – to find it unlawful.

It’s also deeply disingenuous to paint the problem – as various Amathole mayors have done – as the fault of “the previous administration” when there’s a very clear continuity: the ruling ANC.

So while R48.9m worth of small contractors’ invoices went unpaid in 2019, the municipality reportedly spent R1.1m on a new Land Rover for then mayor Nomfusi Nxawe (vehicle budget: R700,000), and R745,000 on a deposit to the East London International Convention Centre for a local economic development strategy meeting.

Then there’s the R3m a month it pays in rent for the council headquarters in East London (not even in the Amathole district municipality). It’s been ordered to move, but that will take a while to put into effect, given that the lease was apparently renewed for two years in March.

There are the six managers, suspended in 2018, who by January this year were still claiming their R1m-R1.3m salaries. And the five contract workers in the mayor’s office, including a PA and two driver/bodyguards – costing R600,000 over three glorious months last year – despite a moratorium on filling vacancies.

Smart ambitions

To be fair, the municipality is owed a rather substantial R1.2bn in unpaid rates and taxes. The six local municipalities in the district together owe about R73m, and government departments and state-owned companies owe R22m. It’s trying to claw back the money – but the 66% owed by households won’t ever be fully recouped, given high levels of indigency.

It’s also tried to downgrade the overgenerous travel and cellphone allowances bestowed on its officials (the Dispatch reports that a general manager gets a R26,680 vehicle and R4,550 cellphone allowance; a “nonmanager” gets R10,786 and R1,300). Unsurprisingly, the municipality has met stiff resistance from its hard-done-by employees, and has apparently so far failed to make its case to the Labour Court.

Returning salaries to the more palatable category 6 municipal level should help matters too, whenever that takes effect.

In the meantime, there’s all the usual bumf about the “opportunities which the 4IR [fourth industrial revolution] presents”, and a plan for a “smart district” as part of “Vision 2058”. And the perennial problem, once summed up so pithily by the overpaid municipal manager himself: “an unfavourable relationship between the budget on paper and the actual cash in the bank”.

Perhaps, in scanning the political scenery for “aspects relating to political and socioeconomic aspects”, the new political adviser will happen on a solution. Lord knows they’re being paid enough for that.

De Villiers is editor of the FM’s Features section