Karabo Ngoepe and Mzilikazi Wa Afrika
Johannesburg - Helen Botes, the chief executive of the Johannesburg Property Company (JPC), and the company’s chief financial officer (CFO), Imraan Bhamjee, are facing accusations that their employment contracts with the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) are not valid, or even legal.
Botes contends she has a five-year fixed-term contract with JPC, which came into effect on October 1, last year.
On October 17 last year, Bhamjee received a letter signed by Botes congratulating him on the board converting his employment to permanent, with effect from November 1 the previous year.
However, the city’s head of group governance, Rajendra Pillay, told the Sunday Independent both these senior executives’ employment contracts cannot possibly be considered valid.
The mayoral committee under then mayor Herman Mashaba’s administration resolved on September 17, 2019, that Botes should receive a four-year extension after the JPC board had earlier resolved to offer her a five-year fixed-term contract extension.
All the CFOs at other entities such as City Power, Joburg Water and Pikitup are on fixed-term contracts of no longer than five years.
Pillay said the mayoral committee resolution that effectively overturned the board’s decision to extend Botes’s contract was shared with the JPC board under the then chairperson, Moeketsi Rabodila.
Rabodila should then have amended the offer of employment to Botes accordingly, Pillay advised.
He said according to “city policy and practice, the board appoints the executive directors”.
A report about Bhamjee’s reappointment as CFO should have been tabled to the mayoral committee for ratification.
“In this instance, no such report was tabled before the mayoral committee,” added Pillay.
He was adamant that the board would have acted outside its agreed-upon powers with the city if it agreed to an employment contract with the CFO without it going before the mayoral committee.
“The city has never encountered a problem of this nature before,” added Pillay.
JPC has more than 1500 employees responsible for numerous property-related business in the CoJ, including handling development and construction contracts, facilities management, property leases, maintenance and outdoor advertising on city-owned properties.
Both Bhamjee and Botes have held positions at JPC for more than a decade.
The entity is owned in its entirety by the city and receives a subsidy from CoJ every year in order to remain solvent.
When asked to comment on the allegations, Botes said that she had simply accepted the offer of employment extended to her by the board, and “it is my understanding that the mayoral committee accepted my appointment”.
She denied that she and the board had done anything untoward in converting Bhamjee’s employment status to permanent, as it was supposedly done “according to the Municipal Systems Act”.
Botes said the board had discussed the conversion extensively in 2018, in the presence of group governance, and that the decision to make Bhamjee permanent was approved by the board and the city manager, Dr Ndhovoniswani Lukhwareni.
She said the head of group governance was also “fully aware” of the conversion.
But, Pillay said this was untrue.
Called for comment, the city manager said that he had not been sent a memorandum by Botes in 2018 to obtain his permission for the contract conversion and he would, in any case, not have had the power to approve such a conversion as the matter would have needed to be tabled before the mayoral committee.
This never happened.
Pillay further pointed out that no other chief executive during Mashaba’s term had been given a five-year contract.
Rabodila, who is still serving as a non-executive director on the JPC board, defended both Botes and Bhamjee’s contracts.
He signed off on both of them last year.
Rabodila said the head of group governance had made a “patent error” by recording the mayoral committee’s recommendation as four years. He alleged that Pillay had agreed to “fix the patent error in the mayoral committee resolution” and that “it was his responsibility to do so”.
Pillay said he had agreed to no such thing and that the mayoral committee resolution had been accurately recorded and communicated to the board. The board and its chairperson should never have disregarded the mayoral committee resolution.
A senior source in the city told the Sunday Independent that the actions of the former board and its executive directors were likely to put JPC on a collision course with the current mayoral committee, and even the new board, which started in March.
“These actions amount to evidence of complete disregard for the mayor and his executive. If the new mayor allows them to get away with doing this, what will happen at all the other city entities? It’s like they’re saying, ‘To hell with what the mayor and his MMCs (members of the mayoral committee) think, we’ll do whatever we like.’
“After this, all the CFOs will demand to be on permanent contracts. All the chief executives will insist on being re-employed for five years, even if the mayoral committee says ‘No, just make it one year’. There will be total chaos.
“They wouldn’t allow a can of worms like that to be opened.
“These people are taking chances,” said the source.
The Sunday Independent