A Recovery Plan in Name Only

Behind the closed doors of a meeting with national and provincial treasury officials last week, a stark reality was laid bare for the leadership of Msunduzi Municipality. The numbers, as one official bluntly put it, do not lie. Despite years under a voluntary Financial Recovery Plan (FRP), the financial health of the Pietermaritzburg-based municipality is not healingit is, by the treasury’s assessment, in decline.

The meeting on November 24, which included the Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and Municipal Manager, was a tense confrontation between optimism and hard data. Municipal leadership pushed back against the treasury’s grim diagnosis, insisting they are on an “upward trajectory.” But documents presented at the meeting, seen by The Mercury, tell a different story of persistent failure and stalled progress.

A Plan Moving at a Snail’s Pace

The voluntary FRP, adopted to address a crisis first flagged in 2021, is badly off track. The report presented reveals that after three full years of implementation, the municipality has completed only 52% of Phase 1a phase originally slated for completion within six to eight months.

The report’s conclusion is damning: “Failure persists.” It notes that the current voluntary setup “might not be enough” to pull the municipality from the brink, explicitly recommending a revision of the plan. In bureaucratic terms, this is a severe vote of no confidence.

The Final Warning from Treasury

Leaked correspondence between municipal officials in the meeting’s aftermath reveals the high stakes. Treasury officials delivered what amounts to a final warning: this is the last chance to see genuine improvement. If measurable progress isn’t made, the National Treasury will move to impose a mandatory FRP.

One forwarded message starkly recounted, “They were not happy with NT saying Msunduzi is in decline.” It quoted a treasury official who stated the municipality “should never have been taken out of intervention,” suggesting a previous reprieve may have been premature.

What a Mandatory Intervention Means

The threat of a mandatory state-enforced recovery plan is serious. It typically involves the treasury appointing administrators with direct oversight, stripping elected councils of significant financial decision-making powers, and implementing stringent, non-negotiable controls. It is a last-resort measure for municipalities deemed incapable of self-correction.

For the residents of Msunduzi, the implications are tangible. A municipality in perpetual financial crisis struggles to deliver basic servicesmaintaining infrastructure, ensuring regular water and electricity, collecting refuse, and settling its own bills, which in turn affects service providers.

The treasury has drawn a line in the sand. Msunduzi’s leadership now faces a critical test: to finally execute the long-promised turnaround with unprecedented urgency, or to cede control of its finances to outside administrators. The voluntary phase of recovery appears to be over; the era of accountability has forcefully begun.

{Source: IOL}

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