The North West MEC for Cooperative Governance, Human settlement and Traditional Affairs Oageng Molapisi has refuted claims that he instructed ANC councillors at the Rustenburg Local Municipality to leave a meeting where the council was expected to discuss a report on allegations of misconduct against the Municipal Manager, Advocate Asmar Khuduge.
The allegations were made by Molapisi by ActionSA Councillor Ofentse Kombe, who also alleged that the speaker of the council has on numerous occasions refused to call another meeting to deal with the allegations.
“It would be unfortunate to entertain allegations and want to respond to them because I don’t want to chase ghosts.
It would be very irresponsible for anyone in my position as the MEC, to instruct councillors whether they are of the ANC or the DA to walk out of a duly constituted council meeting.
So based on that I am saying, it can’t be true that the MEC has instructed the councillors to walk out of the meeting,” said Molapisi.
The MEC highlighted that he has not hesitated to act against municipalities facing allegations of malfeasance, corruption and fraud.
“We have intervened before either by calling the law enforcement agencies to investigate or invoking the relevant section which empowers us, as the MEC, to follow up on those matters.
“The case in point here is the investigations that we are conducting in several municipalities where allegations were made. So, I find it very absurd that this councillor would say that he got it in good authority that I have instructed as the MEC councillors to walk out the meeting.
“I would be the one if councillors walk out of the meeting to pursue them because that is a disruption.
“So, I am disputing this to say there is no such a thing where the MEC has instructed councillors to walk out of the meeting.I think they must find a better justifiable reason as to why the meeting couldn’t proceed,” refuted Molapisi.
The MEC emphasised that the department has always acted against allegations of fraud, corruption and maladministration.
He welcomed ActionSA’s decision to approach the police with relevant evidence and laying criminal charges.
“What we have done so far, there are municipalities that we have invoked section 106 and instituted a forensic investigation, and those municipalities are the City of Matlosana, which we indicated that we have just received a report, and we will be tabling it for implementation in Matlosana.
“The second municipality is Madibeng where we introduced a forensic investigator to follow up all allegations that have been made against councillors, and the third municipality is Greater Taung, where its investigations were concluded a little while back,” explained the MEC.”
Molapisi said that 11 out of 22 municipalities in the province have shown improvement in spending their allocated Municipal Infrastructure Grant (MIG) as compared to the previous financial year.
“Previously you would have municipalities returning money to the national treasury, due to spending below 50% of their allocated funds.
“So, there’s an improvement in terms of performance, in terms of what we have done, and this is as per our intervention where we conduct the workshop and zoom into issues that we think are of a challenge to municipalities.So, we would want all our municipalities to spend their MIG,” said the MEC.
