Johannesburg city manager Floyd Brink is a man sitting in the hot seat behind a seemingly revolving door, running South Africa’s largest city amid gas explosions, burning buildings and political infighting.
With a DA court bid against him being appointed in his position having recently failed due to its “lack of urgency”, the under-fire city manager told TimesLIVE Premium on Wednesday that he is more motivated and focused than ever to bring his city back from the brink of failure.
“It was two years of challenges. Fighting for my job while handling gas explosions, a captured inner city and burning buildings, but we had to move the politics to the side and run the city,” Brink said.
According to his opponents in city politics, when it comes to the position of city manager, Brink doesn’t qualify for the job, does not have enough experience and his appointment was corrupt.
“These allegations have followed me everywhere the DA went. There is no substance and no proof of anything.”
And now, Brink’s opponents have stumbled in court.
“The DA will tell you now that the merit was never tested. That is not true. The first judgment — on November 9 last year — did not set aside my recruitment. The court’s only issue was that Rule 64 was used in the process to appoint me. Rule 64 is for urgent appointments. The city should have used Rule 62, which is for normal appointments.”
He believes the “constant attacks” from the DA to be “the nature of the beast”.
“An opposition party’s main function is to oppose the ruling party. You do something bad, they oppose. Good? Oppose. That is the nature of the beast.”
Brink remains positive about Johannesburg’s future.
“This city hasn’t fallen under my management. Our problems have been coming for a few years. But since I’ve been back we’ve had improved audit outcomes. That was my first focus,” Brink told TimesLIVE Premium.
“Coalitions are here to stay. It is definitely possible to run the City of Joburg in a coalition, but it is all about political management and political maturity.”
The secret is to keep the administrators of the city insulated from the politics of the city.
“Keep them in one corner and the politicians in another so both parties can do what they must do.”
THE ROADMAP FOR THE COJ
“We need to stabilise the finances. Step one is to focus on the revenue value chain to improve that. Also our collection rates and our liquidity and financial position.
“I want to focus specifically on internal controls or internal audits as well as the auditor-general audits. This will ensure that we always have improved audit outcomes,” Brink said. And always the pebble in any city leader’s shoe — the CBD.
“Another important focus is to get our inner city safe from a safety and security point of view. We are going to keep addressing the issue of bad buildings, and we will do that in co-operation with other spheres of government.”
The numbers are a constant challenge.
“We need to grow the economy of Johannesburg. One of our biggest problems is the constant migration from other countries and other parts of SA. According to Stats SA about 3,000 people move to Johannesburg every month. We see that as a very small number compared to reality. The figure we use is up to 18,000 per month. That is a massive strain on our resources,” Brink said.
“Our economy is not spinning at a rate so we can provide the needed jobs for these migrants. This leads to the mushrooming of informal settlements and safety and security issues.”
Keeping the lights on in a time of load-shedding is a further challenge.
“Part of growing our economy is a hard look at our dependency on Eskom for power. We are actively working on this. We have a programme now for solar in all government buildings, the micro grid we are deploying in Alex and similar grids that will be rolled out in the next few months.
“We are working very closely with the provincial government to fire up our own gas turbines, which we already have.”
POWER AND WATER
“Yes, we have challenges in City Power, but we need to invest in City Power to grow our economy. The same with Joburg Water. Our budget and our thinking is really heading towards Joburg Power, Joburg Water and the issues of the inner city as well as our roads.”
Brink is determined.
“We can’t do this alone. We need collaboration with stakeholders. This is already happening,” Brink said.
The DA, however, is sticking to its guns.
On Thursday councillor Leah Knott maintained that Brink’s appointment was declared unlawful and unconstitutional by the court.
“The ANC-led coalition then chose to violate that court order, tabled a new report at council to appoint him by misleading the programming committee into the belief that the report was an update on the court case. They then reappointed him in violation of the original court order which declared the process to appoint him unconstitutional in the first instance,” Knott said.
“In terms of the court order, they had 10 days to appoint an acting city manager and start a new transparent process of recruitment, not retable the original flawed and un-procedural report.”
Knott believes the merits of their case are still to be addressed.
“The case was struck off the urgent roll purely based on the issue of urgency not for any other reason, as the merits of the case were not debated or decided on. The matter was taken to court because the appointment of Floyd Brink, in the second instance, was in contempt of the previous court order. The merits of the case were not deliberated on, nor determined, and in fact the court found that it should be argued in normal court as opposed to urgent court.”
She denied Brink’s allegation of “opposing for the sake of opposing”.
“The DA does not oppose for the sake of opposing, we stand for good governance and the rule of law in the interests of the citizens of this city. It is unfortunate that we have a politician disguised as a city manager, otherwise the issues raised would not have been referred to as a DA issue.
“Our issue remains that a proper and transparent process was not followed, which violates the legislation governing our municipality. This is a matter of public interest as the ANC coalition chose not to be transparent and reappointed Floyd behind closed doors. If there was nothing to hide why the secrecy around the appointment?”
The court battle is not over.
“Our attorneys are busy with the matter, and the city and the public will be informed when we are back in court to argue the flawed appointment of the city manager,” Knott said on Thursday.
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