Strategic Planning Session with Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality — Implementation of Section 154 Support Programme Actions

Venue: Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium

Date: Day 1 — 08 July 2026 – Opening plenary

Protocol and Greeting

Programme Director;

The Executive Mayor

Hon MEC Williams : Jola

Deputy Mayor and Members of the Mayoral Committee

The Speaker of Council and the Chief Whip;

DG of Cogta Mr Tshangana and your Team

HOD : Dr Mlokoti and Your Team & Provincial Treasury

NATIONAL DEPARTMENTS PRESENT: NT: led by Wayne McComans and Sibongile Mazibuko ,SALGA DPME, ELECTRICITY AND ENERGY, DWS,

The Acting City Manager and members of the administration;

The MEC’s office and colleagues from Provincial CoGTA, Eastern Cape;

Representatives of the National Treasury;

Colleagues from MISA, DBSA, the Department of Water and Sanitation, the relevant Water Board, Eskom, the Department of Electricity and Energy, and the Auditor-General South Africa;

Members of the Section 154 support team;

Labour : SAMWU and IMATU

Leaders of Business Formation

Members of the Media

Distinguished guests

Ladies and Gentlemen —

Good morning.

Why We Are Here Today

This session is a follow up of our previous visits and engagements we have had with the leadership of the city.

We are having Mayoral Strategic Session: Section 156 of the Constitution gives this Organ Executive Powers to exercise and Section 153 enjoins the City to structure itself properly to carry the legislative obligations bestowed on it.

We maybe more than 100 here today to offer support and ideas,  but the actual people who have a legal mandate to lead the city are well defined in the law.

We are meeting here to assess the systems ability of the City  to ensure realisation of the Objectives well articulated in Section 152 of the Constitution, through the IDP and its Sectoral Plans and Budget Expenditure.

Implementation of the budget ,impact and the Outcomes ,through tangible deliverables.

Read together with Sections 44 and 56 of the Municipal Structures Act, on the principal role of the Municipal Executive Committees and the Powers and Functions of the Executive Mayor respectively.

This legal provisions place responsibilities on us differently and those of us who are meeting here today, is not because of our choices, but by the designs of the statutes.

It’s important to remain conscious to that reality ,because when pressure mounts it should be well understood in that context.

That the pressure get directed at the Offices we happen to occupy and not us. And how we relate with that becomes profound.

As once said by Amilcar Cabral ‘’Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas.They are fighting to win material benefits,to live better and in peace,to see their lives go forward and to guarantee the future of their children”

Significant meeting for our continued support, oversight and partnership in strengthening the systems of this City

The Cabinet through Medium Term Development Plan under the current Administration , placed a huge collectively and singular responsibility on us to in this regard,  ensure stability of the Metropolitan Municipalities.

Given its strategic importance as the engine of the National and Provincial economy: Its GDP

It’s contributions to the Human Resource Development of the Country: and the  Human Development Index of the country measured through Education and Skills level, Health and Standard of Living

President Ramaphosa once said: When local government works, when municipalities are well managed and deliver on their mandate ,Cities,towns and villages thrive.

This Strategic Session must concretise ideas to build a strong city, grow the economy, restore the dignity of the people

It’s not a blame game session but a moment of strategic reflections informed by our Constitutional mandate : Section 152 and other  legal frameworks.

Section 154 Support Team was appointed and introduced to NMBMM Executive and Administrative leadership and Council. ,

The  team was given a clear mandate: of Assessment and of Diagnosis and Development of a Turnaround Plan

The Diagnostic work was completed. The situation analysis and turnaround plan produced ,I.e Section 154 report was further circulated: —

.The  City remains Fragile and in  a High Risk State

The Mayoral Committee, the Accounting Officers Forum, and the Political Oversight Committee is aware of the Section 154 Turnaround Plan.

Since then, an Action Plan, a Project status Dashboard, a Risk Schedule and Mitigation and a set of High-Value Turnaround projects have all been developed

What we are here to resolve is what happens next.What the Diagnosis Found

The Team identified 101 Challenges

The situation analysis identified inherent systemic challenges across all the focus areas, and I want to place the headline findings on record so that everyone in this room — political and administrative — is working from the same facts.

• Infrastructure and service delivery: non-revenue water at 56.3% and non-revenue electricity at 30.4%; 4,692 outstanding bucket toilets; a deteriorating Blue and Green Drop status; an electricity service trading at a loss. Stabilising this requires in the order of R8 billion for water and waste over ten years, and R1.1 billion for the electricity network over three years, need for motorable roads.
• Institutional capacity: vacancy rates of roughly 80% at top management, 29% at senior management and 19% at middle management, alongside fragmented ICT systems and constrained internal audit and payroll capacity.
• Governance: a weak control environment, acting positions affecting continuity, poor KPI performance, weak consequence management, and policies and by-laws that need review.
• Leadership Stability is the main ingredient for progress
• Supply chain management: evidence of split bids, non-compliant advert periods, high deviation levels and an appeals backlog, alongside the need to centralise purchase orders.
• Contract Management
• Internal Controls strengthening
• Financial health: a collection rate of 69.2% as at April 2026 against a National Treasury benchmark of 95%, an operating loss of R1.58 billion in 2024/25, declining cash reserves and mounting unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
• Revenue Enhancement Strategy
• UIFW&E is at 31 Billion and the work of MPAC
• Audit outcomes: 29 findings currently affecting the audit opinion, a further 104 matters requiring correction, and unresolved qualifications on property, plant and equipment, revenue and provisions.
• LED and Investments.Consolidation of the City’s Economy

. Labour Stability and Performance

• Community Engagements and Communication

Taken together, these are not separate problems. They are one problem — because they define the state of the Metro — and per our own Section 154 assessment, it is a problem that will not be solved by isolated departmental fixes.

It requires an integrated response plan that this Municipality, in partnership with all of us, owns and drives.

Why This Session, and Why Now

On 29 May this year, the support team briefed me directly on progress.

To assess and determine the pace of the diagnostic work and the implementation of the Action Plan

But implementation is being held back by three things:

. Capacity limitations within the support team itself;

. Slow uptake of ownership within NMBMM management;

. Terms of Reference that, no longer match the scale of what this Municipality is facing.

.A Turnaround Plan that sits in a support team’s office, however well designed, changes nothing if not fully implemented .

.Determine based on the discussions, the resources required to realise the PLAN.

What We Expect From These Two Days

This is not another presentation of problems we already know. Over these two days, I expect us to do six things:

• Reach common ground, across all six focus areas, on what the situation analysis has found — no more, no less than what the evidence shows.
• Consolidate the existing Action Plan items into one prioritised, sequenced strategic implementation plan with realistic timeframes.
• Assign clear institutional ownership, accountability and resourcing to every action — naming who is responsible, not describing what should happen in the abstract.
• Agree on a Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting Framework that reports through Council, MayCo, the Accounting Officer Forum and the Political Oversight Committee — so this plan is tracked, not filed.
• Address the identified risks flagged in the progress report, each with a named owner and a mitigating action.
• The City is responsible for the Implementation of the Plan
• Secure the Political and Administrative buy-in this programme needs to outlast the current support team’s terms of reference — because our involvement was always meant to build this Municipality’s own capacity, not substitute for it indefinitely.
• Consolidate the working relations between the City and Various community structures
• Strengthen the City and Businesses Forum ,learning from the Presidents Working Groups and ensure economic development
• Have functional and effective Rapid Response Team
• Improve on the infrastructure capacity of the city

Today’s plenary brings together MayCo and National and Provincial Sector partners.

Tomorrow, the full Council joins us, because the outcomes of this meeting needs to be carried into Council for adoption in August.

Section 160 of the constitution defines Council as the supreme Structure for Decision Making.

That sequencing is deliberate: the technical work happens here, but the accountability sits with the elected Council.

A Word on Partnership, Not Paternalism

I want to close this section on a point of principle. Section 154 support is not, and was never meant to be, national government running this Municipality from the outside.

The Constitution places the obligation to support and strengthen municipalities on us — but it places the obligation to govern on this Council and this administration.

So, the test of these two days is not how good our slides are.

It is whether the Executive Mayor, the Speaker, the Acting City Manager Members of the Mayoral Committee, and every Director in this room leave here able to say: this plan is ours, these targets are ours, and everyone committed to the Plan .

With Council sharpening its Accountability Systems for Improved  Performance.

With National and Provincial government standing alongside, and continue to offer support

Closing and Call to Action

All of the above mentioned issues are not optional but Constitutional Obligations.

Good governance and service delivery go together

JAMES1: 2-4

Suggest that facing various tribulations test your faith and ultimately produces steadfastness and maturity

The people of this Metro deserve better than incremental fixes to a crisis that, on our own evidence, requires an integrated response.

We have done the diagnosis. We have the action plan. What we build in this room over the next two days is the difference between a plan that sits on a shelf and a plan this Metro actually implements.