Johannesburg mayor Dada Morero unveiled the “Bomb Squad” team aimed at tackling challenges facing the city.
Image: Timothy Bernard / Independent Newspapers
The City of Johannesburg has roped in several former bosses to serve in its “Bomb Squad”, led by ANC Veterans League president Dr Snuki Zikalala, to help fix the municipality for the next two years.
Johannesburg mayor Dada Morero on Thursday announced that Zikalala, a former SABC news executive, would lead the team and be its only member to be remunerated.
Three former Joburg city managers Blake Mosley-Lefatola, Mavela Dlamini, and Professor Trevor Fowler, will be joined by the municipality’s other erstwhile executives, Gerald Dumas (ex-chief operations officer), former community development executive director Philisiwe Twala-Tau, who is a representative of the SA Local Government Association, and former chief financial officer Reggie Boqo.
Also part of the Bomb Squad are Morero’s advisor Vicky Shuping, National School Government principal and member of the city’s performance audit committee Busani Ngcaweni, economic and social policy researcher Dr Khwezi Mabasa, EFF senior researcher Dr Gumani Tshimomola, and Audrey Mothupi, Systemic Logic Group chief executive.
Morero said the Joburg Bomb Squad will be a specialised unit assisting the city to arrest crime and grime, fight lawlessness, unlock service delivery bottlenecks, and accelerate delivery.
Among its objectives are to activate rapid response teams in response to reported service delivery hotspots, be the mayor’s eyes and ears, activate rapid interventions to address lawlessness, and execute a minimum programme of high-impact visibility.
Their work will consist of, but not be limited to, monitoring and fast-tracking of the 10 key points as identified and announced during Morero’s State of the City Address last month.
These include implementation of a pothole programme, execution of grass cutting, operational traffic lights across the city, elimination of illegal refuse dumps across all communities, fixing of streetlights in townships and on the highways, addressing sewerage spillages in townships and informal settlements, and formalisation of informal settlements.
“The work of the Bomb Squad will be informed by adopting a precinct approach throughout the city. An appropriate implementation will be developed to give expression to it. It will also be necessary for the Bomb Squad to develop appropriate interaction mechanisms with the city’s service delivery war room,” Morero said.
He added that the work of the Bomb Squad will be led by Zikalala with support from the project management office, leveraging the existing capacity in the municipality’s administration.
The Bomb Squad’s work became operational from this month and its administrative support will be provided through the chief operations officer.
According to Morero, there is no budget allocated to the Bomb Squad as it is individuals that have responsibilities in other departments of government or in the private sector and are giving their time and expertise free of charge.
However, the city will allocate a budget for Zikalala as it wants him to be on a full-time basis and will be paid a stipend.
Morero said three of the Bomb Squad members have financial expertise to help turn around the city’s finances, its collection rate, and other financial issues, including expenditure.
He also expressed hope that in the next year or so, the city's surplus will be just around R5 billion to indicate a turnaround in its finances and an economy growing by 1% to 3% in the next three years.
Zikalala said they were volunteering to ensure that they bring credibility to the city and ensure there are skills and competence.
loyiso.sidimba@inl.co.za