Anger over Bitou's appeal on MM decision

PLETTENBERG BAY NEWS - The growing costs incurred by Bitou Municipality in its fight to keep the municipal manager behind his desk has left residents and other role players hot under the collar.

The storm around the reappointment of Municipal Manager Lonwabo Ngoqo, who was dismissed from the same municipality over financial misconduct in 2012, gathered speed again after the the AUF and ANC coalition decided to contest the Labour Court's finding last month that the reappointment was indeed illegal.

The vote was taken during a special in-committee council meeting on 19 February.

The matter relates to both the irregular reappointment of Lonwabo Ngoqo as municipal manager and the irregular payment of R781 184 to Ngoqo in February 2019.

The council decided to appoint Ngoqo despite the fact that he had been dismissed from the very same municipality in 2012 after disciplinary proceedings found him guilty of financial misconduct.

Legal tussle
Western Cape Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning MEC Anton Bredell took the matter to court after exhausting all other options and challenged the legality of the actions taken by the council. In terms of local government legislation, a municipal manager who is found guilty of serious financial misconduct by a disciplinary hearing must be placed on a register and is not allowed to be appointed as a municipal manager for the next ten years.

This was apparently ignored. As a check and balance, the appointment of a municipal manager must be approved by the relevant MEC for local government. Bredell objected to the approval but the council resisted, which forced the MEC to enforce his decision via the courts.

In August 2019 the labour court ruled in Bredell's favour. The court found that the decision taken by the council was unlawful. It ordered that the settlement agreement between the municipality and Ngoqo, as well as Ngoqo's appointment as municipal manager, be set aside.

The municipality then took the matter on appeal.

The judgment in that appeal was delivered via e-mail on 11 February, informing the parties that the appeal had been dismissed with costs. This is once again being appealed.

DA caucus leader in Bitou, Bill Nel, said the DA in Bitou had requested Bredell to file for a cost order against Ngoqo and the AUF/ANC councillors who voted in favour of the appeal.

"The millions in legal costs to keep Ngobo in power started in 2011 already. These utterly wasteful expenses just keep mounting, to the ire of citizens at every level in Bitou society," Nel said.

Residents up in arms
Since news of the latest decision to appeal, residents have also lambasted the municipality on various social media platforms. Some have called for the individuals who voted in favour of the decision to be held liable for costs in their personal capacity, while others criticised the municipality's spending on court battles such as the one in question, saying that money could be used to revive the area's battered economy, which is a result of the pandemic.

The Plett Ratepayers' Association chairman, Peter Gaylard, said it was disappointing that the mayor will throw good money after bad and apply to appeal to the Constitutional Court.

"It is our opinion that the legal costs incurred on behalf of the municipality throughout the entire saga should be recovered as it was never in the best interest of the municipality to fight to legitimise the unlawful appointment and employment of a person who is not a fit and proper person to hold responsible office and has repeatedly been found by the court not to be so," Gaylard said.

By the time of going to print, the municipality had not yet responded to questions about the motivation for the appeal.

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