Alco Ngobese of the IFP, the longest-serving councillor in the Ekurhuleni metro, has seen it all since he started out in Germiston in 1995.
When Ekurhuleni was created five years later by combining the East Rand local authorities, he served under the metro’s inaugural mayor, the late Bavumile Vilakazi, who served for one year before being sent to Uganda as high commissioner.
Since then the mayoral chains have been worn by Duma Nkosi, Ntombi Mekgwe, Mondli Gungubele and Mzwandile Masina. Masina was ousted by the DA’s Tania Campbell in 2021, and since then it has been musical chairs.
Ngobese spoke to the FM this week amid rumblings of a possible motion of no confidence in the incumbent mayor, Sivuyile Ngodwana of the African Independent Congress.
While both the ANC and the DA, the two biggest parties in the council, deny any intention to bring such a motion, there is clearly a move to “test the waters” — the FM understands it is a move which has been instigated by the ANC, but emanates from smaller parties. Ngobese says the IFP won’t bring a motion of no confidence in the mayor, but it will support one.
“It was stable throughout that time, then Masina came and now the ANC-EFF coalition and the rest is history,” he says.
“In those years some of us were happy to simply serve the community, then greediness crept in and everything became about themselves … It is no longer about residents, everyone is in it for themselves.
“The current mayor has no agency, he is like a puppet on a string.”
Ngobese was axed as a member of the mayoral committee after the DA-led coalition that ran Ekurhuleni until October last year was ousted by a coalition led by the ANC and EFF. He says the DA-led coalition “tried its best”, but the city was already in a bad state back then.
Things have gone downhill under the ANC-EFF coalition, largely due to acrimony between the two. The ANC’s national executive committee has resolved that the pact is not working and instructed local government structures to end it. But there is resistance from the provincial leadership, who insiders say have too much to lose from dissolving the coalition.
In Ekurhuleni, the ANC-EFF partnership resulted in the naming of Ngodwana as mayor, at the EFF’s behest. The EFF also bagged five key portfolios, angering local ANC leaders, who are now at the forefront of the push to end the arrangement.
There is no stability because there is discord in the governing arrangement … It's dog eat dog
— Alco Ngobese
But things are falling apart administratively in the metro. Ngobese tells the FM that the financial situation has deteriorated to such an extent that municipal vehicles have been impounded by sheriffs of the court due to arrears.
“It’s a mess, contractors have not been paid for 12 months … It is becoming a serious issue for delivering services and maintaining infrastructure. There is no stability because there is discord in the governing arrangement … It’s dog eat dog,” he says.
Even the city manager, Imogen Mashazi, and her CFO, Kagiso Lerutla, are at war.
EFF Gauteng chair Nkululeko Dunga holds the finance portfolio. He is facing a conflict of interest investigation after the private vehicle, a BMW, in which he was travelling when he was involved in a crash was found to be fitted with blue lights. The car apparently belonged to a businessman with city contracts, News24 reported.
The EFF has denied wrongdoing.
As for the cash crunch facing Ekurhuleni, party leader Julius Malema says it’s a myth.
“Today they want to create an impression that Ekurhuleni has got financial problems. They even put a motion in the council that Ekurhuleni is about to be bankrupt. We went into the council, opened the books of the municipality. Ekurhuleni is in the positive. It is not negative,” Malema told a party event last month, reported the Mail & Guardian. “The finances of Ekurhuleni were stabilised by the EFF.”
But Ngobese is not the only councillor to raise concerns about finances; the DA, too, has called for a debate on the matter, and the ANC itself has urged the metro to launch a revenue collection drive and enter public-private partnerships to restore the city’s ailing finances.
The old infrastructure is no longer coping, the population has grown, but the rate of building and maintenance has declined over the years… We have gone backward and it all boils down to more interest in looting than delivery
Ngobese says that over the years there has been a significant and steady decline in infrastructure maintenance.
“The old infrastructure is no longer coping, the population has grown, but the rate of building and maintenance has declined over the years … We have gone backwards and it all boils down to more interest in looting than delivery.”
Ngobese also sits on the IFP’s national council, its highest decision-making structure, as the provincial secretary of Gauteng. He joined the party after his father introduced him to Mangosuthu Buthelezi at the age of 14.
He is sceptical about the multiparty charter, which the IFP has entered into along with the DA and six other opposition parties.
“For me it’s premature to say we will work with this or that party. My view is let’s wait for the election results and then assess the numbers first … numbers don’t lie. It is premature to say we will work with this one and not with that one. For now, we should not be ruling anyone out,” he says.
Insiders in the IFP say the Gauteng chapter of the party may, like the party’s Youth Brigade, prefer a partnership with the ANC to the charter arrangement in which the DA dominates. However, Ngobese declines to express a preference, saying only the IFP should keep its powder dry.
What is clear is that the political temperature is rising ahead of the 2024 polls — and very little is cast in stone.
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