Suspended metro manager paid R4.2 million to sit at home

The Nelson Mandela Bay (NMB) Metropolitan Municipality has allegedly been paying suspended municipal manager Noxolo Nqwazi a salary of R200,000 per month throughout her 21-month suspension.

Former NMB Mayor Retief Odendaal shared this information in an interview with Newzroom Afrika. 

Nqwazi was placed on precautionary suspension in late 2023 and again in early 2024, pending disciplinary action which had been instituted against her.

Nqwazi was arrested by the Hawks in September 2022 alongside several officials and businesspeople, all facing charges of corruption, money laundering, fraud, and violating the Municipal Finance Management Act.

They are accused of using kickbacks from a 2020 Covid-19 toilet tender to reward councillors for voting against former DA mayor Athol Trollip.

Nqwazi’s legal team is seeking her discharge, arguing the State presented no evidence against her.

NMB is home to around 1.2 million people, but financial mismanagement and political instability have led to several other budget irregularities, impacting service delivery.

“Since 2009, there have been 44 municipal managers for NMB,” he said.

Deputy NMB Mayor Gary Van Niekerk said in a media statement that the legal fees for Nqwazi’s disputes with the council had reached R800,000.

This is while “the municipality spent more than R5-million paying her salary and those of successive acting city managers appointed during her suspension”. 

“The DA will be scrutinising the entire disciplinary process to date and if someone has unduly delayed said process, he or she will be held to account for any wasteful expenditure incurred,” Retief said. 

The municipality appointed Ted Pillay as acting city manager in April for a period of six months. 

This was based on the assumption that the city will have concluded negotiations with Nqwazi about the terms of the termination of her contract by October. 

Odendaal claims that the suspension process, including R800,000 in legal costs, has been a significant waste of municipal resources. 

“To add insult to injury, for the past two years, five of the nine executive directors, which is the top management of the municipality, those positions have been vacant.”

“I think it is also well documented how many coalition governments there have been and how many mayors have lost their heads here, including myself,” Odendaal told Newzroom Afrika. 

Van Niekerk said that the city was at a crossroads “for clean governance, accountability and the rule of law”.

“Efforts by opposition actors to engineer the return of suspended (and criminally charged) municipal manager Noxolo Nqwazi risk reversing the progress made towards stabilising governance in the metro.”

“Legal wrangling over her suspension has dragged on while she has continued to draw a salary, and contests over her status have become a rallying point in broader power plays in council,” he added.

Budget challenges

Over the last two years, R900 million in grant funding has been forfeited to the national treasury because of an inability of the municipality to allocate the money, according to Odendaal.

Additionally, the municipality was allocated R185 million for transport in the 2023/2024 financial year, and spent only R29 million. 

In the Auditor General’s most recent report on the municipality, it found “inadequate consequences, slow response by management. political leadership and oversight.”

In the Municipality’s annual draft budget published in June, Executive Mayor Babalwa Lobishe said that employee salaries and wages are the second-highest cost driver for the city behind electricity. 

Employee-related costs account for about a quarter of the city’s total expenditure, a figure that the city expects to rise to 26.5% by the 2027/2028 financial year. 

The allocation of the budget to the creation, rehabilitation and maintenance of infrastructure was listed by the municipality as a “significant challenge”.

Odendaal said that in order to resolve these issues, city officials need to be performance managed and should work in an environment where they are monitored and can deliver. 

“Nelson Mandela Bay needs political stability and political leaders who can stabalise the mess in council to be able to ensure the administration becomes accountable.”

Newsday reached out to NMB for comment, but did not get a response by time of publication. Comment will be added if received.