Johannesburg mayor Dada Morero's claims made in Parliament have been dismissed by ActionSA leader and Joburg mayoral candidate Herman Mashaba.
Image: Kamogelo Moichela / IOL
ActionSA leader and the party’s Johannesburg mayoral candidate Herman Mashaba has reacted angrily to the troubled city’s mayor Dada Morero blaming him for the current state of the country’s biggest municipality.
During a joint meeting of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts and the Portfolio Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs on Tuesday, Morero said Mashaba created weak leadership throughout the city.
ActionSA MP Alan Beesley, On Tuesday had asked Morero why his high-level team in Parliament included chief operations officer and former acting city manager Tshepo Makola and the municipality’s head of Group Forensic and Investigation Services Sinaye Nxumalo, who were both dismissed during Mashaba’s tenure as mayor between August 2016 and November 2019.
City of Joburg bosses were in the national legislature for a briefing on the municipality’s 2024/25 financial year audit outcomes and steps undertaken to address and correct the audit findings.
Beesley said Makola and Nxumalo have serious investigation and corruption clouds over them yet they were part of Morero’s leadership team.
In response, the mayor said Makola is a competent individual appointed by the city and allegations were thrown at him by Mashaba.
Morero said once allegations are thrown at a person, the onus was on those who have thrown allegations to take them through a process.
He explained that Makola went through a disciplinary hearing and court processes that found him not guilty.
According to Morero, Nxumalo also went through a process that proved that the allegations against her made by Mashaba were baseless and unsubstantiated.
He said it was not only Makola and Nxumalo against whom allegations of misconduct or corruption were made and that Mashaba’s administration was not able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that those acts that he suggested were committed, did in fact occur.
Morero said the municipality was sitting with a number of cases of people still in court clearing their names after allegations were made against them during Mashaba’s tenure as mayor.
He cited another case of 126 employees in the city’s licensing department who proved that Mashaba was wrong in his assertion and throwing allegations against them.
Morero said a number of senior officials decided to leave the city on the basis of allegations against them made by Mashaba.
“The drop that you’re seeing today in terms of performance on revenue collection was as a result of employees throughout the value chain in the revenue department deciding not to do anything anymore, because anything you touch you are then accused of corruption by Mashaba,” he said.
Morero added that Makola and Nxumalo were competent and have proven beyond reasonable doubt that they are.
However, Mashaba dismissed his successor's statements, saying that during his tenure as mayor he immediately instituted a skills audit to ensure that he got rid of people who were in employment because of who they knew, instead of what they knew.
He said he was very proud of this.
“In the process, over 900 staff members were fired, criminal charges laid against them for corruption and some decided to jump ship before I could get to them,” he said.
Mashaba said he used to get media queries about him getting rid of experienced cadres and his response was that he was getting rid of experienced fraudsters.
“As far as revenue collection is concerned, I invite you to independently go through the audited financials of the city by the Auditor-General before my time, against the three years of my term as mayor,” he explained.
“This is to avoid you going from one response to another. The Auditor-General's reports are public documents that you are entitled to peruse. You judge for yourself”.