ANC challenges ALM on historical debt of R197 million

Lolo Madonsela

ANC Mzala Nxumalo Regional Secretary Zakes Buthelezi has lashed out at this publication following an article in which AbaQulusi Local Municipality (ALM) Acting Mayor Mncedisi Maphisa announced that the municipality has managed to pay off its historical debt of R197 million. Buthelezi claims that the article may be “construed as implying that the debt was incurred under the ANC administration, as the ANC was the leading party in the ALM during that period.”
He said that according to the annual financial statements of the period under review, “What the acting mayor is doing is in fact cheap politicking. There is a saying that ‘until lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter’. I must say that the ANC fortunately does have its own sober historians who will not stand the malicious mud-slinging by the IFP-coalition-run Abaqulusi Local Municipality and its acting mayor.

Also read: ALM pays off R197 million historical debt

“Firstly, Mr Maphisa claims they now owe only R15 million of the R87 million debt that led to the municipality being placed under administration. A quick reference to page 6 of ALM 2016 Annual Financial Statements (AFS) reveals that, at that period, Abaqulusi owed Eskom zero rand. Mr Maphisa is correct in appreciating the clean-up effected by CoGTA in their sordid administration, but he must never lie about the source of the municipality’s problems, which we all know is the inefficient and corrupt administration they are running.
“Secondly, Mr Maphisa blames the deplorable audit outcomes that have been received by his administration on the ANC. Nothing can be further from the truth. The ANC inherited a municipality that was in dire straits in 2011 and worked with all stakeholders, including CoGTA, to clean up the mess that had been left by another IFP mayor, Cllr Dlamini, at the end of his administration. The municipality was placed under a Ministerial Intervention led by Mr Manda and the state of its finances was quick to improve. The ANC never resented the intervention that was made, because it understood properly and correctly the deep hole that the IFP administration had dug for the residents of Abaqulusi,” stated Buthelezi.
He referred his responses to the ALM annual financial statements of June 2016 and June 2019. “The former represents what the ANC did and the latter exposes the lies of the IFP in the municipality.”

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