MEC Nkosi unexpected visit to uThukela raises eyebrows

The Alfred Duma Local Municipality says it has noted “with grave concern” the actions of the KZN Provincial Department of Human Settlement (KZNDoHS) in conducting visits to its local communities.

In a statement issued by the Office of the Mayor, the Municipality accused KZNDoHS officials of deliberately disrespecting municipal leadership. This, after several occasions where the provincial department’s MEC Sipho Nkosi has been visiting this Municipality without communicating with the Office of the Mayor, and only notifying the Municipal leaders.

Such actions by the KZNDoHS officials have raised serious questions as to whether the provincial department has any underlying political agenda when conducting the government duties.

“As the leadership of this Municipality we view this as a deliberate disrespect and a big brother attitude where the Provincial Department parachutes to the Municipality without involving us, with an aim of undermining the Integrated Government Relations Act principles and the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa,” the Office of the Mayor said.

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On 31 October 2023, MEC Nkosi visited two local municipalities under uThukela district to issue Title deeds to the community members.

Nkosi commenced the day by conducting “Operation Siyahlola” at the Mbulwane housing project in Alfred Duma Local Municipality. Thereafter, the MEC visited St. Chads to hand over 1606 Title deeds to beneficiaries.

“Today we learned in the media that the MEC for Human Settlement, Hon Nkosi has announced that his office will take the rights of Title deeds handover from the municipality as this follows his visit to the municipality, even after his office was advised by the Accounting Officer to respect the Municipal leadership by informing at least the Office of the Mayor about the visit, which was not done.

“As the Municipality which falls within the three spheres of Government, we are fully aware of our line functions which is to deal with communities within our jurisdiction,” the Municipality specified.

Lately, the Municipality has started a program of introducing ‘Implementing Agents’ in some of its wards. To their surprise, the Municipal officials heard through the media that the Head of the Department of Human Settlement has written to the Municipal Manager calling off the program and threatening that he will withdraw funding if the ‘Implementing Agents’ program continued.

Even more surprising was that the letter addressed to the Municipal Manager was circulated on Facebook a night before it was emailed to her, according to the Municipality.

“This left us with so many questions as to how the Department operates; a formal letter was written to the HOD by our Accounting Officer raising such concerns and up to today not even a note acknowledging the letter has been received from Mr. Zungu,” said the Municipality.

Furthermore, the Municipal Manager (MM) noted the letter inviting her to the event that was to take place in Ward 27 on Tuesday.

According to the statement, the MM did speak to Mr. Mbili who is an official within the Department of Human Settlement advising him to ensure that a letter from MEC Nkosi’s office must be sent to the mayor’s office as a matter of protocol and good governance, before the day of the event for distributing the Title Deeds.

This was to ensure that the Mayor can also form part of the MECs programme and in his reply to MM, Mr. Mbili indicated that according to his understand the letter should have been sent long ago, the Municipality indicated.

“Our understanding is that when the Provincial Department is visits any Municipality, especially when the MEC would form part of the Programme, the Mayor of that particular Municipality would be informed and be invited to form part of the delegation of MEC.

“We wish to state it clear that the utterances of today where it has been said that the Municipality doesn’t want to give the MEC Title deeds to be handed over to the beneficiaries are not correct. The unavailability of the Title deeds were as a result of the officials of the Human Settlement Department who did not want to recognise the Municipal leadership and wanted to do things their own way.

“The Municipal Manager, who is the Accounting Officer of this Municipality reports to the Mayor and she cannot be told by another Accounting Officer [HOD] to disrespect her Superiors.” the statement continued.

The Office of the Mayor called upon MEC Nkosi “to decisively deal with his staff who failed to do what is correct” leading to the MECs program of issuing Title deeds.

* The KZN Department of Human Settlements had not responded to questions Vulankungu sent to them at the time of publishing. A follow-up article will be written once a response is received.