This article was initially published at 18:28 on Wednesday 10 June. We are republishing the article today (Thursday 11 June) in case readers missed it last night.
KNYSNA NEWS - Knysna is still reeling from fits of confusion after the shock resignation of acting municipal manager Dr Michele Gratz on 28 May together with the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Mbulelo Memani and Ward 10 Councillor Peter Myers.
During her resignation speech she called Knysna “broken” and ‘’paralysed” and recommended that the Knysna Municipality be placed under provincial administration (read “What does 'administration' mean for a town?”).
In the interim the DA has made it clear that it wants Gratz to serve as that very administrator. "I do support a section 139 intervention in Knysna,” the DA’s Dion George told KPH this week.
“I would support Dr Gratz as administrator should this arise. I agree that the municipality is overstaffed with underperformers. The financial position of Knysna requires investigation to determine how this crisis arose.’’
Gratz, who is to officially leave office this week, has not denied or confirmed that she has designs on the post. Asked about whether she was considering the proposals to take over executive power, Gratz told KPH that she did not want to comment on the matter. Municipal spokesman Christopher Bezuidenhout said that Gratz would be leaving the municipality as acting municipal manager on Thursday 11 June.
In a second startling announcement, the Development Bank of South Africa (DBSA) declared its intention to withdraw a much needed R71-million loan to the municipality in the wake of the resignations.
And in yet another dramatic turn of events, DA councillors illegally walked out of a special council meeting on Thursday last week initially called to discuss the budget and IDP. One of the main reasons for the walkout according to DA Councillor Michelle Wasserman in a statement to the press, was because the council would not prioritise a recommendation that Gratz be delegated all Council’s executive powers.
“The approval of this would have had the same effect as Dr Gratz being appointed as Administrator and would have allowed her to clean up the mess that the municipality is in - quickly and without unnecessary interference,” Wasserman said.
The item concerning Gratz was however apparently only placed on the agenda some minutes before the council meeting commenced. Municipal Speaker Mertle Gombo told KPH earlier this week that she had received a phone call from Gratz on the night before the meeting saying she [Gratz] had a letter from the province.
“On Thursday we received the letter with no signature and we don’t know where it came from. Eight minutes before the council meeting the letter was made an item of council and we don’t know who did that. Wasserman pushed for the item to be discussed in council and I explained that the matter will be dealt with after we have dealt with the items [originally contained] in the agenda,” Gombo told KPH earlier this week.
In an initial statement to the press this week, Wasserman said that the ANC Speaker, Mertle Gombo, had “blocked” the request for discussing this item as well as another pertaining to a “support package” that included plans for Knysna’s financial and administrative recovery.
“The ANC also refused to consider the approval of a request to the National Department of Cooperative Governance to support the Province with this support package,” Wasserman said.
Gombo however vehemently denies this saying: “We were going to deal with the item after we have finished what was on the agenda. Instead the DA walked out of the council meeting. I was shocked to see a statement from Wasserman stating that the item was blocked because the item was going to be discussed in council and they walked out of the council. Who blocked the item?”
According to the Knysna Ratepayer’s Association, the ‘’DA caucus per Councillor Wasserman is blatantly misleading the public, as the Speaker made it clear the item would be considered after the Budget and IDP. Councillors should understand that they cannot simply walk out of a Council meeting when things do not go their way. They are required by law to stay and to debate the matters on the agenda (read “Council meeting walkouts 'irresponsible'”).
"Walking out of a meeting without leave means that a Councillor has breached his/her duties. The Speaker, the MEC for Local Government, as well as the Municipal Manager, are all required by law to act against such Councillors.’’
However, in a statement to KPH yesterday Wasserman said the Speaker’s claim that she had received the Executive Power/Support Package item just before the meeting at 14:00 is a lie.
“The Speaker had received the item in the morning and the Council meeting was adjourned from 09:00 to 14:00 specifically so that the ANC caucus members could discuss the Executive Powers / Support Package item with their political leader, Mr Cameron Dugmore, who had driven to Knysna in the early hours of the morning to discuss the item with them.’’
According to Wasserman Dugmore had agreed, on behalf of the ANC, that the Executive Powers / Support Package item would be first on the Council agenda. “When the Speaker refused to allow it to serve first, and lied about when the ANC had received the item, it became clear that they had no intention of approving it,’’ Wasserman said adding that the Chief Whip of the ANC, Cllr Claudine Croutz, later confirmed that “the ANC will never give its power away”.
In its retort to Wasserman’s initial statement, the KRA stated that it would have been ‘’extremely irresponsible for any Councillor to agree to simply hand over his/her executive powers to Dr Gratz or anyone else for that matter without having had a reasonable time to consider the significant consequences and without consulting their constituents”.
Gombo makes no bones about a possible ulterior motive for the walkout: “The DA is doing all this trying to put Gratz in power so that they benefit from this as they are in charge of the province. They want to rule this municipality as Gratz reports to the province,” she said.
According to the KRA, the walk out led to the ‘’meeting being adjourned because the important agenda items IDP, SDF and Budget could not be voted on in the absence of a meeting quorum. (11 out of 21 Councillors are needed). The Budget has to be approved before the end of the financial year, 30 June. The Budget had been prepared by AMM Gratz (the proposed Administrator) and had been workshopped with the Councillors. It is a sad day when our elected representatives hold the budget process and IDP hostage, to force through another agenda. By ensuring that the budget is not approved this becomes the motivation to place the town under administration.”
In response to Wasserman’s statement, ANC regional secretary Major Sokopo also told KPH the meeting should have focussed on the budget and not the item the DA tried "to sneak" into the agenda. “They are willing to abdicate their responsibility as elected people to the Knysna council and they decide that the power of council must be given to an acting municipal manager who still has two months left to fulfil her duties,” he said. In an earlier press statement, he declared that Knysna is not on level of having to be placed under administration and said the DA’s call to do so is ‘’unnecessary and opportunistic” adding that it ‘’undermines the attempts to find a solution amongst all political parties represented in the council.”
Sokopo, speaking for the ANC, proposed that Gratz rather be allowed to continue in her current post for a further six months as acting municipal manager in order to complete a turnaround strategy. “The legislation makes provision for assistance to municipalities that find themselves in this situation not to be placed under administration. Knysna needs all its public representatives to work towards building a sound and stable government.”
The Knysna Ratepayers Association (KRA) in a statement shared similar sentiments. “Nothing prevents Dr Gratz from honouring her contract with the municipality and staying on until mid-August. At that stage the situation can be reassessed,” the association said.
The added bone of contention was that the walkout by DA caucus members left the Council without a quorum and thus unable to continue with the meeting which included the approval of the annual municipal budget. The budget as a whole has been placed in question by the fact that the Development Bank of South Africa (DBSA) has allegedly reneged on the R71-million loan to the municipality in the wake of the resignations.
In her initial press release Wasserman states that the alleged reason for the DBSA withdrawing the R71-million loan is as a direct result of the resignations of Gratz and Memani. “These resignations have caused the DBSA to view the Knysna Municipality as far less stable and as a much higher repayment risk. The delegation of Council’s executive powers to Dr Gratz and the securing of the Support Package would have provided the DBSA with the assurance that Knysna Municipality has stabilised, is on the right track and will be able to repay its loan,” she said.
In a press statement today Wasserman implied that the DBSA loan would be forthcoming once Gratz was handed executive powers over Knysna. “Giving executive powers to Dr Gratz would ensure that the problems that she had raised on 28 May 2020 as her reason for resigning would be resolved and she would then have the power and authority she needs to do her job,” she said.
The KRA responded that if the resignations of Gratz and the CFO were responsible for the BDSA’s withdrawal of the loan, it was all the more reason for them to remain in their present capacities and AMM and CFO with the municipality. “There is no reason why the DBSA would have grounds to renege on the loan if DR Gratz simply withdrew her resignation,” It said. “It is after all these resignations that caused the trouble in the first place.”
Sokopo in turn stated that the issue of the R71-million DBSA loan had not formed part of the council meeting. “The loan was approved last year and does not depend on whether Gratz is here or not. In the previous council meeting, there was a resolution to ask province to come and assist the municipality, we have not received anything about that. Today the DA is jumping up and down portraying Gratz as the messiah who can single-handedly fix the problems of this town. No one person can solve the problems of Knysna,” he said.
The KRA’s Susan Campbell concurred that the DBSA loan was irrelevant to the issue of the resignations and discussion of the municipal budget. ‘’The DBSA loan was approved for this financial year which ends at the end of June,’’ she told KPH yesterday. “The municipal budget and IDP are for the 2020/21 financial year which commences on July 2020.”
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