Special Valentine’s Day message for suspended ELM CFO
Please don’t be my Valentine! Suspended ELM CFO Andile Dyakala is expected to appear in a Johannesburg court on Valentine’s Day February 14 - not for Cupid’s missiles of love, but for the legal arrows of the justice system weighing yet another protection order against him.
If the application by former ELM Municipal Manager Lucky Leseane is granted by the Booysens Court on Valentine’s Day, it will be the third protection order granted against Dyakala and his abusive and threatening behaviour over the past few years.
Leseane said this week he had sought court relief after receiving an abusive and threatening SMS from Dyakala in December following a court attachment blitz on ELM assets and bank accounts on R6 billion debt owed by the municipality to Eskom.
Vaalweekblad obtained the messages from other sources which read:
“How u fought me is how I am fighting u
“I win Take care”
Leseane confirmed there was no love lost between the two men but declined to share the messages from Dyakala.
“Dyakala seems to think he is a law unto himself but although suspended, he remains subject to ELM discipline and Code of Conduct for senior managers. I have written to ELM’s Mayor on the matter but have received no response yet,” said Leseane.
Leseane had already left ELM when he received a message from Dyakala, who was Leseane’s direct subordinate and widely seen as responsible for the financial mayhem and mismanagement of especially Eskom and Rand Water accounts.
Dyakala was also directly involved in the 2019 decision to dismantle ELM’s smart meter programme – the best of its kind in Gauteng – without warning or contingency planning, leading to lost revenue amounting to billions of Rand and vandalisation of infrastructure.
Smart meter service provider BXC won a record R500 million judgment against ELM which resulted in its return to Emfuleni with its reactivation and installation programme again proving a money-spinner for the municipality and a hit with consumers.
Last year Golden Triangle Chamber of Commerce (GTCoC) President Klippies Kritzinger was granted a protection order against Dyakala, who had sent death threats on social media and photographs of his own mother’s grave to the business activist.
Previous to that, then acting Executive Mayor Khetiwe Ntombela was subjected to extreme gender abuse by Dyakala and obtained a protection order against the official, who has been openly accused of professional incompetence by a previous Mayor.
Dyakala was eventually disciplined and subjected to consequence management processes by an independent panel by Leseane, but he received a tap on the wrist warning, leading to ELM Council demanding a legal review.
Dyakala did not respond to requests for comment.
