ActionSA launched a petition on Saturday which aims to finally dissolve the Emfuleni local municipality in Gauteng’s council so that the municipality can be placed under administration.
This struggling municipality is characterized by years of corruption, mismanagement and lack of service delivery.
Funzi Ngobeni, Gauteng chairman of ActionSA, says they hope to get more than 20,000 signatures against the municipality.
“The municipality has repeatedly failed to deliver basic services, with garbage disposal being unreliable and water, sanitation and electricity services almost never being delivered,” says Ngobeni.
The municipality has been placed under administration by the provincial government since 2018, after which irregular expenses rose to more than R1 billion and bills could not be paid.
“This intervention clearly produced few results and in the process service delivery continued to deteriorate,” he says.
“The provincial government should urgently dissolve the council to ensure accountability and restore service delivery.”
The Constitution states that the provincial government can dissolve a municipal council and when it is dissolved, there should be elections within 90 days to appoint a new council.
“ActionSA believes that the community of Emfuleni simply cannot wait until the 2026 municipal elections to change the municipality’s council composition, and therefore we are asking for action,” says Ngobeni.
“The Gauteng provincial government has failed for more than three years to tackle the extremely worrying situation at the municipality, and therefore drastic steps must be taken to remedy the situation.”
The Emfuleni local municipality has frequently made headlines over the past few months regarding the turmoil at the municipality.
Earlier this year, chaos broke out in a council chamber at the municipality after 2,243 municipal workers and 90 council members did not receive their salaries for the month.
Before this incident, some of Emfuleni’s service providers took matters into their own hands, including Eskom who sent the sheriff to confiscate the municipality’s vehicles in an attempt to recover its outstanding debt to the power supplier. At that stage, the municipality owed approximately R1.3 billion to Eskom.
ActionSA has meanwhile pledged that it will do everything in its power to ensure that residents’ needs are urgently taken care of.
