Central SA
Mangaung Metro intervention extended─── LUCKY NKUYANE 15:33 Mon, 06 Mar 2023
The National Intervention Team, tasked with aiding the ailing Bloemfontein-based Mangaung Metro Municipality in the Free State to come out from its financial woes, has been given an extension in its stay at the metro.
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The minister of Cooperative Governance (Cogta), Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, has agreed to extend the time period of the intervention team, led by acting city manager (ACM), Tebogo Motlashuping.
The intervention was announced in 2022 after the metro failed to recover from the financial crises it faced for a number of years, which led to the failure to deliver basic services to residents of Mangaung.
The metro was supposed to have appointed a permanent city manager (CM) by the end of February 2023, as per the prerequisite of the national intervention. The minister has since then further extended the period of this intervention team by three months.
“In a letter written by minister Dlamini-Zuma, it says “The letter confirms that the current acting city manager, Mr Tebogo Motlashuping contract will be extended for a period of three months or less in order to provide for an opportunity to hand over to the incoming city manager. All other acting heads of department can be extended beyond this point pending to finalisation of the relevant appointment processes, and following consultation with relevant departments”, Dlamini-Zuma added. Currently, the Metro is without an executive mayor after Mxolisi Siyonzana tendered his resignation as mayor in February 2023.
In 2022, during the presidential imbizo held in Mangaung, Dlamini-Zuma described the troubled Bloemfontein-based Metro as a “messed up” municipality.
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In 2019, the National Treasury announced that the only Free State Metro Municipality, which includes Bloemfontein, is the only metro municipality that adopted an unfunded budget for the year 2018/19 and 2019/20.
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In August 2019, the rating agency, Moody's Investors Service, downgraded the municipality's long-term global scale issuer rating to B3 from Ba3, with a negative outlook, following a review initiated in May.
Moody's said the three-notch downgrade reflects the Free State municipality's weak and rapidly declining liquidity position, which recently led to a failure to service commercial bank debt on time, implying a relatively high probability of default in future.
