The City of Johannesburg Council approved the write-off of the hotly debated "education" category debt in yesterday's meeting, 1 September 2022.
The 2015 amendment of section 8 of the MPRA introduced mandatory categories to be used across all Municipalities. Flexibility on the categorisation that existed in the past was removed, and to maintain a category, Municipalities are required to get approval from national Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA).
The Multi-party government, anticipating and appreciating the adverse effect this amendment would have on residents, continued to make representations to the Minister to allow for, amongst others, the retention of the education category. The Minister was not amenable to the City of Joburg's request.
In her address to the Council, the MMC of Finance, Councillor Julie Suddaby, spoke of how the city has interacted with residents, not only the educational institutions. Suddaby talked about the tension between escalating service delivery costs, residents' ability to pay and legislative requirements, saying, "[It] is a political minefield rarely navigated without injury. "
The MMC of Finance stated unequivocally that the City of Johannesburg complied with all legislative requirements regarding public participation before passing the rates policy and rates by-law on 27 May 2022.
Cllr Suddaby noted that the city is currently in the firing line in the Gauteng High Court and the court of public opinion. Suddaby spoke about how it has been said that the city decided to remove the education category and is now backtracking.
The MMC of Finance for the City of Johannesburg emphatically said, "The City of Johannesburg did not decide to remove this category. The Minister of Cooperative Government and Traditional Affairs refused to allow the city to retain that category. Short of litigating against the Department, the city was constrained. The City of Johannesburg is not making a U-turn to correct its mistakes; it is staying the course set when we pleaded with the Minister to retain our education category."
In how the city handled the public participation process, Suddaby said there is work to be done. "We cannot neglect our responsibility to our customers or ignore that they feel they were not properly consulted or allowed the opportunity to give meaningful inputs. As a government that prides itself on being caring, we cannot ignore that our consultation process was weighed and found lacking."
The MMC committed the city to the following improvements from now on:
Public meeting presentations and materials will now include a specific section dealing with the rand value impact of any increase higher or lower than CPI;
Improve communications with key stakeholders, especially those who will be directly affected by legislative amendments; and
To actively endeavour to encourage the attendance of public consultations.
Finally, MMC Suddaby noted that the residents of Johannesburg are the focus of the MPG, who are working hard to get the basics right. She ended her address by saying, "We have a choice on how we respond. We can continue to point out the role that national government played, and they can continue to deflect – but in all this back and forth, we are talking over and around our residents. The multi-party government chooses to listen to our residents – they are the ones we serve. We do not have many options for immediate mitigation; we have extensively workshopped an interim strategy that will benefit our customers and not adversely affect the city's coffers."
ENDS
MMC for Finance: Cllr Julie Suddaby
For more information or an interview, please contact
Michelle Ashburner
Deputy Director: Communications & Stakeholder Management
078 800 3643 | MichelleA@joburg.org.za
01/09/2022
