Supra toots his own horn in North West budget speech

Embattled North West premier Supra Mahumapelo delivered his budget speech on Tuesday morning blowing his own horn‚ saying that his office had investigated cases of irregular expenditure and had implemented consequence management.

Mahumapelo‚ who is facing revolt from his own people in the province and in his party‚ said his office had achieved a turnaround time on payment of suppliers.

He has been accused of corruption and failing to provide proper services to communities in the North West.

The Hawks recently raided his office looking for documents in its investigation related to a multi-million rand IT contract with Nepo Data Dynamics. The company controversially received a R215-million payment for its rollout of the province's IT transformation programme.

Mahumapelo said he was committed to continue to turn around the financial management challenges in his office and improve on the audit outcomes for the current financial year.

"The office of the premier is committed to maintain high levels of ethics‚ efficiency and good governance. We have therefore directed all outstanding disciplinary cases (to complete) by the end of December 2018‚" he said. "This is in order to demonstrate our commitment to deal with corruption‚ fraud and any unethical behaviour."

An inter-ministerial committee led by Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma has been appointed to come up with the solution to the problems faced by the province. Mahumapelo said it was not a miracle that events of the past few weeks‚ where residents took to the streets calling for his resignation‚ happened.

He said the protests have reignited the spirit of resilience that kept his longing for liberation alive during the struggle against apartheid.

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