This emerged during a parliamentary oversight visit by the Portfolio Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta), chaired by Dr Zweli Mkhize, which saw several Free State municipalities appear before the committee as part of a two-day programme that began on Thursday (24/7).

The Free State province has been flagged by the Auditor-General as one of South Africa’s worst-performing regions. Key concerns include 16 municipalities operating with unfunded budgets, more than R4.2 billion in unauthorised expenditure, repeated disclaimer audit opinions, and widespread failure to submit financial statements on time.

Mangaung Metro, in particular, came under intense scrutiny. It was forced to return R194 million in unspent grants for the 2023/24 financial year and was found to have spent R39 million on excessive staff overtime, with some workers who reportedly clocked up to 120 hours of overtime in a single month.

The Mangaung delegation included Mayor Gregory Nthatisi, Municipal Manager Sello More, Speaker Bongani Mathae, and CFO Zuziwe Thekiso. They stressed that many of the problems were inherited from previous administrations.

“Let me indicate this to you, ladies and gentlemen, the period under review is the period that accounts for 2021/22, 2022/23, mainly 2023/24. Now, without any excuse, we came into the municipality, effectively from October 2023 when budgets and all processes were run,” said Nthatisi.

He explained his administration began working to curb runaway overtime payments. “We worked in decreasing overtime incrementally down to ensure that we bring the metro to normality by way of avoiding the overspending on this payment of ridiculous overtime that was there.

“We did serious investigations, we also discovered that there were officials who were sanctioning overtime even to people who were not working, others were not even in the province, others were in jail. They were earning a salary, they were getting overtime.”

Disciplinary action has since been taken against those implicated, and a new shift system has been implemented to reduce overtime abuse, Nthatisi said. However, he acknowledged that the shift system has its own hiccups in terms of implementation, as it’s new.

Severe shortage of tools of trade

He added over R60 million has been set aside to hire more staff to help address the metro’s 60% workforce shortage.

It also emerged that Mangaung is grappling with a severe shortage of tools of trade, such as compactors and waste collection trucks, hindering its ability to deliver basic services.

Responding to concerns about grants being returned unspent, Nthatisi clarified that these funds are often tied to strict timelines and specific uses. “For us to be able to implement grants, we must be able to make sure that engineering work has been done, and contractors are appointed in time.

“They are on a time frame, so if you waste any time, then a particular department comes and pounces on that grant, saying you are not utilising it, we can utilise it elsewhere. In the past, 2021/22, 2022/23, half of the grants would go back, if not all. But since then, the improvement is that we have spent between 70-90% of the grants that are given to us.”

The mayor also pointed to a high turnover in municipal leadership as a root cause of instability and maladministration.

“In 2021 and 2023, seven city managers came and left the metro, including two administrators. Some of these officials committed crimes and ran away with municipal documents. For us to conduct proper tangible consequence management, documents must be traced,” Nthatisi explained.

“We are retrieving all council resolutions from predecessors to check where council monies were spent.”

He added that certain contractors with questionable dealings are under investigation. “The scramble for political control of Mangaung by different political parties sabotaged what we are dealing with today. The long and short is that people ran away with a chicken and munched it, and they woke up looking for eggs. 

“So it is our business to ensure that we really do organise Mangaung to its former glory by way of making sure that we recover lost money and lost grounds.”

OFM News/Kekeletso Mosebetsi cg