MyJHB

Stuff from Johannesburg

Creating Employment for the Shady and Corrupt

Dear Editor

Last week, the ANC objected to being labelled as corrupt. However, there is almost daily evidence to the contrary.

Since taking control over Johannesburg in an unlawful coup, the ANC has lost no time in putting people in place whose past ranges from shady to manifestly corrupt.

It has also taken steps to weaken the oversight structures that are designed to prevent or combat corruption.

The following has happened:

  • The corruption-busting Group Forensic and Investigation Services (GFIS) unit, has been purposefully left without anyone to direct its activities;
  • Tshepo Makola, who was implicated in the ENS Africa report of procurement irregularities in Public Safety, as well as having featured in matters that were submitted to the SIU, has been appointed to act as the City’s Acting Chief Operations Officer;
  • William Mazibuko, who was likewise implicated in the ENS Africa report is still in his substantive position of Director: Disaster Management;
  • Sinaye Nxumalo was dismissed from her position as Executive Director: Group Risk and Assurance in the time of the previous DA-led Johannesburg administration. After 2019 the ANC wasted no time in bringing her back. Despite her being responsible for identifying and curbing maladministration, irregular and wasteful expenditure, corruption abounds, and no one gets held accountable. Reliable sources have indicated that the ANC wishes to shift GFIS functions to fall under her control;
  • Similar moves are being made in the City’s Group Legal and Contracts Department. This is with the intent of shielding certain officials implicated in corruption from facing disciplinary action;
    Among the Members of the Mayoral Committee, features Cllr Mpho Sesedinyana who had a case of common assault opened against him late in 2017. Yet the ANC deems him a fit and proper person to control the portfolio responsible for delivering refuse collection, electricity, water and sanitation – the Department of Environment and Infrastructure Services;
  • One of the first actions by the ANC was to terminate the Boards of the City’s entities. One of these, the Johannesburg Property Company handles assets worth billions of rands. On Wednesday, the Democratic Alliance opened a case in respect of a suspicious transaction of R27-million. The ANC is seeking to replace the Board of that entity, which had opened a disciplinary case against the CEO over the R27-million transaction and the CEO is now on special leave. We are informed that the intention is for the new Board to reverse the actions of the previous Board to protect the CEO.

The pattern that emerges from the above is that the ANC is clearly more interested in protecting its friends than protecting the residents from the ravages of corruption that has led to unacceptable levels of service delivery.

We are committed to fight against this corrupt cabal.

But we do not fight for ourselves.

In truth, this is not our fight. It is the fight of all the law-abiding residents of Johannesburg.

It is for this reason that we do what we do.

Regards

Dr Mpho Phalatse
DA Johannesburg Leader

Category:

Top Star Drive-In: The Cinema on the Mountain of Gold

The Ferreira Dump began growing in the late 1800s, composed of the crushed rock and chemical residue left over after early, inefficient mining processes had extracted as much gold as the technology of the time allowed. By the 1960s, it was a flat-topped, man-made mesa overlooking the city. In a stroke of entrepreneurial genius, the surface was tarred and the Top Star Drive-In was opened. It quickly became a South African institution. Its appeal was not just the movies, but the unparalleled view: as the sun set, the massive white screen would flicker to life against a backdrop of the glowing skyscrapers of the Central Business District, separated from the viewer only by the elevated M2 highway.

In the decades before television arrived in South Africa (1976), the Top Star was a primary social hub. It was a democratic space in an undemocratic time; while the city below was strictly segregated, the “car” served as a private bubble that allowed a degree of social freedom not found in traditional theaters. For many Johannesburgers, the Top Star was a site of nostalgic rites of passage—first dates, family outings where children were piled into the back of station wagons with blankets and flasks of tea, and the Saturday “car market” where the parking lot transformed into a sprawling hub for buying and selling second-hand vehicles.