DURBAN - KWAZULU-Natal Premier Sihle Zikalala has been accused of interfering in the appointment process of the new city manager for the eThekwini Municipality.
DA leader Nicole Graham alleged in a statement on Thursday said that there was an attempt to pre-select the person who was going to be the next city manager.
The Premier’s Office, however, pushed back on the allegations, saying this was an attempt by the opposition to gain relevance by attacking the premier.
“The DA in eThekwini has written to mayor Mxolisi Kaunda to demand that he call an urgent Executive Committee meeting. It is alleged that the ANC’s deployment committee met yesterday (Wednesday) and that three names and a favoured candidate were decided for the eThekwini city manager position.”
The position of municipal manager is hotly contested, with at least two individuals from within the municipality said to be vying for the top job. Close to 300 people had applied for the position and that number has been whittled down to about 29 candidates who are being put through the interview process.
“It is alleged that Premier Zikalala played a key role in this meeting and that the favoured candidate is currently a municipal manager on the South Coast. Zikalala seems increasingly intent on demanding that people of his choosing occupy positions in local government. This is unlawful and despotic behaviour,” said Graham.
Graham said the ANC and their coalition partners had blocked opposition parties from sitting in the formal interview process for the position.
Graham said: “A motion by DA whip Thabani Mthethwa to include the full executive committee on the interviewing panel was narrowly defeated at February’s council meeting.”
Graham said Kaunda must clarify if and why such a meeting took place and whether he was part of it.
“He cannot be involved in a panel if he carries an instruction from the ANC.
“A municipal manager hand-picked by the ANC before the process even starts is not only illegal, it is incredibly unethical and a show of poor faith to eThekwini’s people,” she said.
She said the DA had also met colleagues in the opposition to hold the ANC accountable.
Thabane Miya of the EFF said Kaunda should explain if such a meeting took place. CMiya said the city needed a competent manager who was going to lead the turnaround process.
IFP councillor Mdu Nkosi said opposition parties said they would never tolerate a situation where the process to appoint a manager for such a critical municipality was taken elsewhere and not through a legitimate interviewing process.
“It’s now becoming clear why the ANC did not want members of the executive committee sitting (that include opposition) on that panel, they wanted to perform such shenanigans.”
Nkosi said as far as he understood, there were many individuals who had applied for the position, including people used to running big municipalities.
“I have nothing against their chosen candidates, but we need to know about the experience that candidate has, we do not want to find ourselves faced with a situation we were in the last five years,” he said.
Mayoral spokesperson Mluleki Mntungwa said: “All I can say is that the process to appoint the city manager has not been concluded. We will make an announcement once it has been concluded.”
Spokesperson of the Premier Lennox Mabaso, responding to the allegations, said they were so ludicrous that he did not even waste the premier’s time by consulting him on them before responding to the media.
“The DA propaganda would be laughable if it was not so sad. It is sad that this is coming from a person who is a leader who ought to know better. The recruitment policies of the municipality belong to the municipality,” he said.
He said such claims were work of counter-revolutionary propaganda and they (government) knew that the DA was targeting the premier and this would continue until 2024 and with the intention of undermining and demonising the work of government.
He said it was also sad that such fantasies were finding fertile ground in the media.
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