Reports of dissolution of North West municipalities ‘fictitious and baseless’ – ANC IPC

The ANC in the North West will communicate the extent of interventions in the beleaguered province in due course, the party’s interim provincial committee (IPC) said.

Party MP and IPC spokesperson Kenny Morolong also dismissed reports that there were plans to dissolve municipalities as “fictitious and baseless”.

SABC News reported that the “interim provincial committee of the African National Congress (ANC) in the North West was expected to announce its decision to dissolve a number of municipalities”.

“More than half of the province’s municipalities are under administration. This is due to non-performance, political instability and financial challenges,” the report reads.

The state of the various departments in the province are not much better, a parliamentary reply reveals.

Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, also confirmed in a written response to a parliamentary question from DA MP Cilliers Brink that the Office of the Premier, the Department of Health, the Department of Public Works and Roads, the Department of Community Safety and Transport Management and the Department of Education in the North West were all subject to interventions in terms of Section 100(1)(b) of the Constitution.

Pouring cold water on claims that there are plans for the dissolution of municipalities in the platinum-rich province, Morolong said: “The IPC will communicate its decisions in due course with respect to the state of municipalities, the impact of Section 139 [of the Constitution] and all other related matters.

“The reports of dissolution of municipalities are fictitious and baseless.”

In the SABC News report, Morolong says: “I want to give an example with Mamusa. We have a debilitating state of governance in this municipality. Clearly there’s no value of money for ratepayers. The confidence of people in Mamusa has been eroded. The ANC had to act decisively against wrongdoing and we will do so.”

Asked what “decisive” action and intervention meant, Morolong told News24 that the decision to dissolve municipalities was clearly defined in Section 139, 1(c).

“While as the IPC we are duty bound to direct and supervise the work of provincial and local government, we respect the powers of the provincial government to independently exercise its powers with regard to this related provisions of the law.

“We will explicitly communicate the extent of the interventions of the ANC provincial leadership in due course,” said Morolong.

In an interview with SABC in August, ANC deputy secretary general Jessie Duarte said the IPC was put together to “…assist us to rebuild the branches of the ANC, to make sure that there are no double branches, to take the regions that are due for conferences to their conferences and to work towards a provincial conference where we will elect a leadership that will be focused on unifying the ANC”.

Duarte continued: “Our view is that we need a conversation that talks to how we correct some of the things that have been raised in the auditor general’s reports and by the national government, primarily it is about the issue of service delivery.”

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