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An intervention team sent by the national government late last year to help turn around the state of affairs at the troubled Buffalo City Metro has been met with “resistance”, so much so that they had since reported these challenges to provincial and national government political bosses.
The resistance and alleged non-cooperation were allegedly perpetrated by senior metro administration bosses, resulting in the high-level team of experts being unable to perform its duties optimally.
This was revealed by Eastern Cape co-operative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta) MEC Zolile Williams, while addressing a high-level outreach programme led by Cogta deputy minister Dr Dickson Masemola at a KuGompo City beachfront hotel on Thursday.
Masemola said the purpose of the gathering was to “take stock of the state of BCM, to assess progress in the Section 154 support programme, and to strengthen a co-ordinated path towards recovery, stability and improved service delivery”.
Metro spokesperson Luzuko Buku however denied there was resistance, saying the intervention was proactively requested by the city itself.
“This on its own should be telling of the fact that the municipal political leadership, led by the executive mayor [Princess Faku] and the administrative management led by the city manager [Mxolisi Yawa], have a solid positive posture on the Section 154 support team,” Buku said.
In August 2025, the national government stepped in to rescue the metro, deploying a team of experts, otherwise known as the Results Management Office (RMO), to stabilise the municipality under a special constitutional intervention.
Invoking Section 154 of the constitution, a provision aimed at strengthening municipal governance, the national government sent a 13-member technical team to the metro to address deep-rooted governance, financial and service delivery failures.
The team, led by seasoned finance executive Simphiwe Dzengwa, was deployed to support the municipality in key areas such as finance, engineering and infrastructure, spatial planning, ICT, supply chain management and institutional co-ordination.
At the time, Masemola warned that the intervention marked a final opportunity for the metro to avoid collapse.
The intervention team’s diagnostic findings report was tabled behind closed doors during the Thursday gathering.
Addressing the open session of the gathering, Williams said he was deeply concerned by claims that the intervention team had met some resistance from BCM administration bosses while doing its work.
The MEC took a swipe at metro administration bosses, accusing them of being “highly qualified, but incompetent” in running the affairs of the city, which he said was once a trendsetter in terms of good and clean governance.
He said crucial administration and service delivery challenges faced by the city were a result of inefficiencies in the city’s administration
Speaking to the Dispatch on the sidelines of the gathering, Williams said the Section 154 intervention team had “reported formally that they are confronting resistance from metro officials”.
He said the team was not working as it should because of this resistance.
He said the alleged resistance was in terms of implementing corrective action as proposed by the team, saying this was evident by delayed implementation of measures to deal with the exorbitant irregular and wasteful expenditures, which he said sat at R11bn and R6.6bn, respectively.
“So we want to confront that because those officials, we are actually doing them a favour by deploying skilled personnel to come and assist them to address these problems, while they are there and paid handsomely.”
The MEC said the reported resistance also related to how city authorities were dragging their feet in dealing with “evergreen contracts, some of which date back as far as the year 2000”.
“We have been told that there is a tendency of delayed implementation of corrective action as suggested by the team, while there is non-cooperation with the team in terms of ensuring that everything that is supposed to be done, at which time frames, is done accordingly.
“Now we need to deal with those vigorously and anyone who stands in front of us in terms of resolving those issues will meet the full might of the law,” Williams warned.
He said once those responsible officials were identified, they would be “isolated and removed from the system”.
“We are saying, if senior officials are among those involved in resistance, the council must deal with them.
“We are going to put pressure because we want to deal with those resisting us doing what we want to do.”
Masemola said the diagnostic findings that emerged from the intervention process, “are serious, and require sober attention”.
“They point to an operating deficit, a rising debtors’ book, major irregular expenditure, weaknesses in billing and revenue management, serious water and sanitation failures, vulnerability in the electricity network, procurement weaknesses, fragmented ICT systems, and severe technical and institutional capacity constraints.
“These are not isolated challenges. They are symptoms of deeper structural and governance weaknesses that must now be addressed with urgency and discipline.”
Masemola said over time, BCM, which he said had been classified as a medium-to-high systemic-risk municipality, had faced persistent governance, financial, institutional and service delivery challenges.
He said these challenges had been raised repeatedly through oversight processes, audit findings, support initiatives and stakeholder engagements, and included weak financial controls, deteriorating infrastructure, governance failures, poor consequence management, institutional fragmentation and declining service delivery outcomes.
Buku said the metro’s management and leadership continued to co-operate with the Section 154 support in an effort to turn around the city.
“We have seen no major hindrance in this journey,” he said.
DA councillor Anathi Majeke said both administrators and politicians found to resist this intervention needed to be taken to task, “because this is costing taxpayers quite a lot of money to have consultants come here on a monthly basis to actually be doing work and it’s bearing no fruit”.
UDM councillor Anele Skoti said decisive action needed to be taken against any official found to have resisted co-operation with the intervention team.
He blamed cadre deployment in metro administration as the root cause.
Daily Dispatch
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