The chairperson of the SA Local Government Association (Salga) and former Joburg mayor Parks Tau‚ says the municipal government body has not received any formal notification of withdrawal from the association from the City of Johannesburg. His reaction comes after his successor in the City of Johannesburg‚ Herman Mashaba‚ announced that the new council formed after the August local government elections would not support Salga.ANC can’t come to terms with losing Joburg: DAThe African National Congress (ANC) is a bitter party “battling to come to terms with the fact that it is no longer in power in the City of Joburg”‚ the Democratic Alliance (DA) in Gauteng said on Wednesday morning. “I speak here in my capacity as chairperson of Salga...there is no local authority that has withdrawn its membership from Salga.“I would not want to go into a situation where we have a debate about matters that have been discussed publicly when we as an association have not received any indication of a municipality that wants to withdraw.“In fact‚ contrary to that‚ we are getting messages about local authorities‚ including Johannesburg‚ committing to work with Salga‚” Tau told reporters at a briefing during the Salga conference in Sandton.DA, EFF fall out over Jozi upgradesJohannesburg is going to be a battleground for differing views on service delivery priorities between the EFF and the new DA administration. Mashaba shocked the local government sphere when he said he said he would withdraw support from Salga‚ which he described Salga as a cadre deployment body for the African National Congress that has become top-heavy and wasteful in its spending.Both Mashaba and the executive mayor of Tshwane Solly Msimanga‚ who are members of the Democratic Alliance‚ did not attend the opening session of the Salga National Conference.Earlier‚ the Premier of Gauteng‚ David Makhura‚ said that provincial government could not support municipalities that were dividing Salga. His views were echoed by the SA Municipal Workers Union which vowed that it would not make it possible for any council to withdraw from Salga.DA accuses ANC of waging coordinated campaign to disprupt metro council meetingsA coordinated campaign on Thursday from the ANC in the council meetings of Nelson Mandela Bay‚ Johannesburg and Tshwane to disrupt the business of the day has undermined democracy and exposed the ANC’s true colours as a party of lawlessness‚ the Democratic Alliance has charged. During the media briefing‚ the leadership of Salga was questioned about failing to act against those found to be corrupt and the poor audit opinion received from the Auditor-General‚ Kimi Makwetu.In his response‚ Tau said Salga was prioritising increasing the control mechanisms which will reduce chances of people being corrupt.“We should start by improving governance systems and control in our local authorities. By improving transparency and accountability you are able to mitigate the problems of corruption.“The work that we have been doing as an association is to improve accountability‚ transparency and reporting in our municipalities. You do not want just to come at the end of the problem and say that you have found that somebody has done something wrong‚” he said. The report released by Makwetu in June showed that irregular expenditure by municipalities more than doubled in recent years. The report showed that in 2010/11‚ irregular expenditure was R7.3-billion‚ but this had risen to R14.75-billion. Makwetu said the reason for the increase is the continued non-compliance with supply chain management legislation.Fruitless and wasteful expenditure spiked by more than R1-billion in the five years and municipalities in Mpumalanga‚ Eastern Cape‚ North West‚ Free State and Northern Cape were the main culprits linked to the increase.Unauthorised expenditure increased threefold to R15.32-billion‚ due to the overspending of budgets...