The national government has stepped in to rescue the failing Buffalo City Metro, deploying a team of experts to stabilise the embattled municipality under a special constitutional intervention.
Invoking Section 154 of the constitution — a provision aimed at strengthening municipal governance — the department of co-operative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta) announced it would send a 13-member technical team to the metro to address deep-rooted governance, financial and service delivery failures.
The move was revealed on Wednesday by Cogta deputy minister Dickson Masemola during a high-stakes meeting in East London, attended by mayor Princess Faku, senior councillors and provincial officials, including Cogta MEC Zolile Williams.
Masemola warned that the intervention marked a final opportunity for the metro to avoid collapse.
If the city’s leadership failed to turn things around by March 2026, Masemola said, the national government would be forced to take even more drastic action.
The team will deal with the city’s stubborn governance, financial, institutional and service delivery challenges.
Masemola said the technical team, led by seasoned finance executive Simphiwe Dzwengwa, would comprise a multidisciplinary team with expertise in project management, municipal finance and budgeting, supply chain management and audit, engineering, land asset management and planning, service delivery improvement, ICT and data cleansing.
During a meeting with metro leadership at the East London IDZ, Masemola read the riot act to senior councillors, including Faku, council speaker Humphrey Maxegwana, chief whip Ntombizandile Mhlola, and mayoral committee members.
Masemola said BCM “had control deficiencies due to poor departmental co-ordination and a lack of standard operating procedures”.
While he conceded that service delivery in BCM was under strain, he said these issues, “compounded by political and administrative dynamics and high municipal debt levels, underscore the urgent need for co-ordinated, well-resourced interventions to restore functionality and public trust”.
Dzwengwa’s team, in collaboration with the National Treasury, provincial Cogta, the Municipal Infrastructure Support Agency (Misa) and the provincial treasury, would craft a plan, Masemola said.
It would be submitted to Faku, Williams and Cogta minister Velenkosini Hlabisa, while the council would “monitor the deliverables periodically, as will the office of the MEC and minister”.
Masemola said the team would work side by side with the city administration.
“Among municipalities not doing well in the country, you are counted among those, but we need a paradigm shift.
“We are not happy with councillors engaged in battles for their own interests ... we want a focused leadership. We are not asking you, but directing you to do the right thing,” Masemola said.
Masemola said the city, which he said lacked capacity, had “unending political squabbles resulting in colleagues at each other’s throats”.
“We are pleading with you not to force us into the extreme, because that we can do.
“If you continue to fail us like you do now, we will be left with no option but to take serious decisions about the future of this leadership.
“I want this to sink in. You can make this intervention work, or collapse it.
“But once we get a signal, we will be forced to act, because at the moment, we are very impatient with you.
“All of you here can go tomorrow,” Masemola said.
The announcement came a day after the Daily Dispatch reported on an ANC national executive committee report warning of “a looming risk that BCM could slip into dysfunction”.
The report came after heightened political tensions in the council, with the mayor facing a motion of no confidence from her own ANC colleagues.
Williams pulled no punches at the meeting, describing intraparty political shenanigans by ANC councillors in the metro as “a disgrace and an embarrassment”.
Williams, who doubles as the party’s provincial treasurer, said political instability was “defocusing” the city from performing its minimum required functions better.
He also voiced concern that the city had been in the news for all the wrong reasons, and characterised the “hatred” shown by ANC councillors against each other as a sign of them losing their political consciousness.
“With a straight face, I can tell you now what is happening in this metro is an embarrassment ... You are a disgrace and an embarrassment.
“This is while your city is vulnerable and quickly descending into chaos,” Williams said.
Addressing the gathering, Faku said this was not a moment to retreat into despair, but an invitation to act decisively.
“The crisis is no longer a technical issue, but a political one, and affects the legitimacy of the state, the credibility of the ANC, and the stability of our democratic institutions.”
Among the support required by the city, Faku said, was the deployment of senior governance experts “to facilitate political stability and manage council dynamics”.
“BCM stands at a crossroads and this is not a time for spectatorship, but decisive intervention,” Faku said, adding that “we do not take this support for granted”.
As the only metro in SA under full ANC control, Faku said, BCM’s success or failure “will reflect on the movement’s credibility as we approach the 2026 local government elections”.
While DA councillor Anathi Majeke welcomed the intervention, saying it was an indictment on the city’s administration and political leadership, she said her party was highly concerned that Faku and the ANC “are attempting to use state resources to rescue their political factions and the dwindling support the ANC has in the country and the metro”.
“It is high time that we have this kind of intervention. We have seen that all the measures that BCM had brought, including the financial recovery plan, has borne no fruit.
“We hope we see a strategic turnaround of the city.
“We feel quite strongly that even if we bring all these people, if there is no culture change of management within the metro, absolutely nothing will change.
“There is a culture of impunity and no consequence management and that has been allowed to fester over the years,” Majeke said.
EFF councillor Mziyanda Hlekiso also welcomed the invoking of Section 154 in the metro, saying it would go a long way towards addressing crippling challenges.
Political analyst and governance expert Prof Susan Booysen, while saying that she was cynical of many government intervention measures, said Section 154 should be embraced as it brought much-needed support to a municipality and resulted in much more capacity.
But in many cases the intervention measures “do not bring solutions, as challenges creep back in after intervention measures have been halted”, she said.
However, doing so in BCM had the “potential to be a very helpful measure”.
Williams confirmed a similar national government intervention is set to be announced for the troubled Makana municipality on Thursday.
Daily Dispatch
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