Pretoria - Executive Mayor Solly Msimanga is willing to step down as a result of his frosty relationship with city manager Dr Moeketsi Mosola.
This is contained in an explosive letter penned by Msimanga to DA national leaders in which he said the feud had dealt a serious blow to service delivery in the city.
He requested the national leadership under Mmusi Maimane to intervene by lobbying for the support of the EFF with a view to suspending or ousting Mosola.
Msimanga desperately asked his DA seniors to work out something that would lead to Mosola’s exit, failing which he would be willing to quit.
“We have campaigned on a ticket of bringing better services to our people, doing so with no drama. As things stand, I for one don’t feel that we can continue working together with Mosola going forward. It’s either this man goes or I go,” he wrote.
He highlighted an onslaught unleashed by Mosola on social media against the DA-led administration.
“The lies told and sheer disrespect that has been displayed by Mosola has really strained relations with myself and all the other political principals. I have avoided responding to his public utterances, which have been based on lies and manipulation,” he said.
Regarding service delivery, Msimanga said: “The performance of the City administration has deteriorated in the past financial year. This can be attributed to a city manager whose attention is not focused on the job at hand.”
He said Mosola rarely attended weekly meetings as part of the Service Delivery War-Room initiative to assess basic service delivery issues.
Details in the letter showed that Msimanga resorted to approaching his seniors out of “the greatest of frustration and concern”.
He said the party was making progress in terms of service delivery after it took over in 2016.
While he said he enjoyed cordial relationships with all parties in council, he also said the situation had changed of late.
“This was after we decided to be more strict with what we were expecting in terms of performance of our officials, more telling when we decided to investigate certain matters,” he said.
He said things started to go wrong after the introduction of “checks and balances which ensured that our mandate was carried in Exco (executive committee) and ultimately in Mayco (mayoral committee)”.
“If my office does not have control of the City’s policy agenda, if there is no proper interface between the executive and the City administration, how will we implement our manifesto? This made the city manager very uncomfortable. Honestly, that’s when and where the major fights between the then chief of staff (Marietha Aucamp) and the city manager began,” he said.
Msimanga was also concerned about the operations in Supply Chain Management, saying there were crucial tenders that never got to be awarded.
“In one instance appointment letters for the supply of hot asphalt and bitumen, necessary to repair potholes, had been sitting on the city manager’s desk for months,” Msimanga said.
DA’s spokesperson Solly Malatsi said: “We cannot comment on letters that cannot be authenticated. However, we have always maintained that we are intolerant of any maladministration and corruption.”