Premier Mabuza summons leaders of poor performing municipalities to one-on-one meetings with him

27 August 2013

Mpumalanga Premier David Mabuza will soon hold one-on-one meetings with poor performing municipalities in an effort to determine the type of sanction they deserve.

Speaking at a provincial co-ordinating forum lekgotla today [Tuesday, 27 August 2013] in Nelspruit attended by the mayors, municipal managers and member of the executive council, Mabuza said the leaders of the poor performing municipalities would further have to present their cases at the provincial headquarters of the ruling party.

The decision to hold such meetings and to taking them to the ruling party’s headquarters emanated from the Auditor-General’s report which painted a gloomy picture for Mpumalanga municipalities’ performance.

The Premier said he was not happy with the overall performance of the municipalities and was concerned that the Auditor-General had raised similar matters year-in and year-out, but there was no improvement on the running of the municipalities.

“If the assessments by the Auditor-General are not good enough, it therefore means that whatever we have told our people out there that we will do, we will never achieve it. I am not surprised that from time-to-time you end up finding yourselves colluding with the people.

“When the sun is rising, you are extremely arrogant to the people. When everything is nice, we even forget about the people and do mistakes that are very costly. The difficulty you have is that we are not standing on a very same stand. You are just next to the fire.

“You even forget that your positions are very difficult, even those of the ministers are much better because they sometimes come once to meet the people, whereas you stay with them every day. When people complain about RDP houses, they do not even go to the department of human settlements but come directly to you, and yet you are impatient with them,” said Mabuza.

He reiterated his previous statement that there were big shortcomings within municipalities which had been over emphasised again and again, that there was lack of leadership. He pleaded with them not to be impatient about him as he was pushing for better service delivery.

“As a provincial administration, we are travelling our last mile. It is only logical to go back and look at the things we said we will do for the people to see if we have done them. As a ruling party, we had an agreement with the people through our manifesto. Although there were issues, people believed in us and gave us a mandate to continue and run government.

“We therefore have a big assignment before us. People trust us and we cannot afford to disappoint them. There are areas where we are trying our best, but our overall performance shows that we are just not doing well,” said Mabuza.

The Premier said he demanded that they stay focused adding that he had observed that certain leaders had taken a posture of working against the ruling party which had deployed them to government.

“I can see that you are getting tired of me, unfortunately we are married here and we will forever be together as long as we are working for our people. We have reached the point where we must agree that things are just not alright.

“We are now heading towards the elections, correctly speaking we must set the mood for the elections, and unfortunately there are certain things we cannot avoid. I am going to upset the mood. If you undermine your mayors and members of the executive council, it means you are undermining everybody including the Premier and the President,” said Mabuza.

Issued by Zibonele Mncwango

Spokesperson: Mpumalanga Premier

Mpumalanga Provincial Government

Office of the Premier

Tel: (013) 766 – 2453

Mobile: 079 491 0163

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