Opposition parties in the City of Tshwane have accused the metro’s DA led coalition government of evading responsibility for the mismanagement of municipal funds. The City, now cash strapped, has earned a series of negative audit reports from the Auditor General. Mayor Celliers delivered his State of the City address on Thursday and defended the qualified report the institution obtained saying its a marked improvement from the adverse opinion it got for the previous year but opposition parties rejected the assertion and accused those in charge of the coalition government of acting busy when all they are doing is preside over an inevitable collapse of municipality.
“All they know is to make excuses and blame those who came before them but the reality is that the DA, now with Action SA, have been in charge for many years and delivered nothing. The only notable thing is their mismanagement and theft of municipal funds which they don’t want to take responsibility for. Even in the speech we just listened to the mayor want us to pretend as if the damning auditor general report was never issued. We can’t accept that, they have to take responsibility for collapsing the city,” said EFF councillor Benjamin Disolwane.
The DA led coalition government has consistently blamed the ANC for most of what is not going right in the city but the ANC which ran the municipality until 2016 rejected this saying the DA has had enough time in power and failed to make an impact.
“Just like other DA mayors that came before him, Brink doesn’t want to take responsibility and want to blame the ANC for everything. The reality is that it’s the DA that has led us to the mess that we find ourselves in. Nothing is working, they have been in power for eight years now but our people have not experienced any improvement in service delivery and there’s also the mismanagement of our finances, you can read the auditor general report for facts, they are failing and must take responsibility for the mess,” said ANC Councillor Aaron Maluleka.
Even Rise Mzansi which is yet to contest local government elections has taken an interest in the affairs of the city and accused the DA of making empty promises.
“The dominant parties in Tshwane failed the people. When the ANC was in charge there was service delivery challenges and the DA came and sold dreams to the people. The first DA mayor Solly Msimanga who is now a premier candidate came in he promised that the water problems in Hamanskraal would be resolved during his term and that the abandoned Babelegi industrial site (also in Hamanskraal) will be revived since then the party has changed mayors so many times that we will have to pause this interview just to count how many mayors the DA has deployed to the city and none of the issues have been resolved. Instead we’ve seen mismanagement and looting of the city’s resources at an unprecedented scale which was even flagged by the AG so in 2026 the people of Tshwane must just boot out the DA”, said Michael Shecklton, a regional chairperson of Rise Mzansi.
Meanwhile Brink denied not taking responsibility insisting that his administration is doing its best to stabilise the city’s finances.
“We are not complacent about our financial situation at all. We are merely saying we have made significant progress in our financial rescue which is fundamental for us to be able to rollout services to our people. We are not just congratulating ourselves for the qualified report but are saying its a significant improvement from the adverse opinion we received in the previous year and that it shows that we are on the right direction and its not just us saying it. The reputable Ratings Africa Agency says Tshwane’s finances are the most improved so the next step in the financial rescue is to get an unqualified report. This also shows that the right decisions are being made and our Tshwane ya Tima programme will help us raise money to pay our debts so we can borrow money to be able to rollout free basic services,” said Brink.