The Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati District Municipality in Vryburg in the North West has pledged to sustain its improved financial situation and avoid regression to the level of dysfunctionality and possibly face a risk of being placed under administration again.
The municipality was among several other municipalities in the province which were placed under section 139(5)(a) and (c) of the Constitution and the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA) in November 2021.
The action was aimed at addressing severe financial distress, including the implementation of a financial recovery plan and the appointment of representatives to oversee financial operations.
This as the municipality in the past faced financial instability, poor audit outcomes, persistent allegations of corruption, wasteful expenditure, and reliance on conditional grants among others.
Now five-years later, the municipality has finally been removed from the financial recovery state, after it adopted its funded budget, stabilised its finances and can utilize its allocated capital grants.
Executive Mayor Motseokae Maje told YOU FM Newshour that the municipality collaborated with the provincial and national departments of treasury to correct its financial situation.
“This declaration basically means that as a municipality we have been able to stabilize our financial condition after we were placed under mandatory intervention of the Municipal Financial Management Act (MFMA) due to its inability to spend its conditional grant for what it is meant for and failure to deliver on its conditional mandate of delivering services to residents.
Over time we have worked with these departments to turn the situation around, so that the municipality ends up adopting its funded budget and spending it on what it’s meant for.
This has helped us improve in terms of service delivery and resulted in our Municipality being removed from the intervention,” said the Executive Mayor.
Maje has ascribed the failure of the municipality to perform its mandate to the fallout between the political and administrative leadership of the municipality.
“Remember municipalities are highly regulated.
There’s no way that you will have a situation where an institution directs its conditional grants for purposes which are not meant for, and we will agree that such incidents will not be done without the authority of the institution.
So, I think in some instances there was a lapse in both political and administrative leadership of the institution at the time,” explained Maje.
He adds that to succeed, there must be strong leadership and tasks appropriately assigned.
“It takes courage, there must be a political will from those entrusted with the responsibility of providing political oversight and the same goes for the administrative head.
We must always ensure that as a council and the leadership of the municipality we put the administration in line and roles are clear as to who does what and when.
It was difficult previously to ensure that we maintain the line as stipulated in the constitution so that there’s no conflict in terms of who does what etc,” emphasised Maje.
Furthermore, Maje said that they have managed also to develop a “collegial working relationship between the administration staff and the political leadership of the municipality as the relations were strained before.”
The municipality also reported a significant improvement on the audit outcomes of the 2025/26 financial year.
