Durban - The people of Durban are to get their bus service back.
In a full council meeting in the city hall on Wednesday it was decided that the eThekwini Municipality would take back the operations of the financially troubled bus services from the private operator, Tansnat Durban.
The bus service will now be run as a municipal entity – like uShaka Marine World, the Moses Mabhida Stadium and the Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre. These all have their own staff and boards of directors which answer to the municipality.
But, despite the decision, the city is still locked in a court battle with Tansnat Durban, a close corporation owned by taxi boss Mandla Gcaba, a nephew of President Jacob Zuma. The city is pushing to have the company liquidated to recover R52 million that it believes it is owed.
It was reported earlier this month that the municipality had launched an urgent high court application against Tansnat, claiming Gcaba had given himself a R30.7 million loan from his company’s funds which was allegedly not repaid.
City officials said Tansnat owed the municipality R52m, no financial statements had been prepared in two years, it was struggling to pay its bills and it had been bailed out too many times.
Gcaba claimed the municipality had made “hearsay allegations” against his company and had launched the liquidation application without “clean hands”.
He was quoted as saying the city had “suppressed material facts” and was “seeking through the back door” to wind up his company to take control of the bus operation.
He denied the loans, saying “certain liabilities” had been debited to his loan account and he was “regularising this”.
He also denied that the bus service was unable to pay its debt, and said he believed his company was providing a good service in spite of being “shortchanged” in subsidies from the council.
Legal wheels
On Wednesday Tansnat Durban operations manager John Wilkinson said the company was unaware of the new development but said he was certain it would not be immediate as “legal wheels turn slowly”.
A year ago, when
the city first acknowledged the service was teetering, a task team was set up to look at a better way to operate the bus service.
Commuters complained it was unreliable and often non-existent.
The task team comprised officials from the municipality's management services, its transport authority, human resources, its city fleet and the legal department. The team also consulted the national and provincial departments of transport for advice.
Three options were looked at for the bus service: to run it as a municipal entity; to run it as an internal unit/department of the municipality; for it to remain outsourced.
At the time city manager S’bu Sithole gave Tansnat Durban four months to come up with a new business plan. The company failed to meet the target and still had to be “rescued”, especially when its drivers downed tools when they were not paid or when the buses ran out of diesel.
In a report tabled at yesterday’s executive committee meeting, the city said it had intervened several times in the company’s operation of the service in the past two years since it had been awarded the contract.
DA councillor Heinz de Boer said it was “about time” as the business model had “flip-flopped from one model to the next over the past 15 years”.
“I think the realisation is that it’s a service. It is going to cost us money in the long run, but it is a cost that we are going to have to absorb if we are going to give a decent service to the public.”
The city was also likely to absorb the bus drivers.
IFP councillor Mdu Nkosi said the business model was doomed to failure, but opposition parties were outvoted by the ANC when it was proposed in 2004.
The Mercury