South Africans may remember pictures of the newly built stadium by the Enoch Mgijima Local Municipality in the Eastern Cape, which cost R15 million for a small spectator stand, and almost nothing else. There are now calls for an investigation of the same cash strapped municipality over the R95 million tender in relation to the construction of a 6.7 km road. Ken Clark, the chairperson of civil society group, Let’s Talk Komani, spoke to Radio Islam. Clark is a counsellor in the Enoch Mgijima local municipality. He had also run for mayor in the local government elections.

Regarding the investigations into the stadium, Clark said that to date nothing has been forthcoming. In relation to the construction of the road, he said, “it cannot cost R13 million per kilometre to construct a road. I physically drove that road today. And I have driven many other roads in this area at election time. And that road is by no means the worst, although it does serve as the industrial area and the area of the park is less than one kilometre.” He said that while the road did have potholes, it was in a fairly good condition. Clark added, “And if you were to repair it and give according to my civil engineering friends, (it) would take that road for another 10 to 15 years, and that would cost probably less than R30 million.

Clark said that the centre of the town struggled with electrical issues because of aging infrastructure and cables. He said, “what we need is that these cables get replaced and that the substation be refurbished. We estimated that this would cost R35 million. Now this is the heart of the CBD of the entire town, and there’s probably thousands of jobs that depend on that. Yet, we can’t find money for that, yet we can squander R95 million on 6.7 kms of road.” He said it was unjustifiable.

The Enoch Mgijima Municipality had been placed under administration in March 2021. This meant that no one in the municipality, including the municipal manager, could make decisions having financial implications for the council. Clark said that the municipality had, in fact, been under administration, “for a lot longer than that. In fact, I think it started in somewhere in 2018…… the municipal officials felt that when the election was held, the municipality was no longer under administration, which is completely wrong.”  He said that division still existed amongst the politicians, as to whether the municipality was under administration or not. Nevertheless, according to Clark, the administrator was not granted enough authority to properly do his job.

Further, Clark said that under administration, the debt in the municipality to Eskom alone, has risen from around R300 million to R702 million. He added, “And that number is climbing every single month because very little is being paid.” He said that there was also an inability to provide services of any major means.