Nathi Mdladla prioritises service delivery in Msunduzi as ANC's new regional convener

The newly appointed Moses Mabhida ANC regional convener, Nathi Mdladla, in Pietermaritzburg, will next week meet Msunduzi Local Municipality Mayor Mzimkhulu Thebolla and his caucus to discuss the administrative and service delivery challenges facing the municipality.

Mdladla was appointed alongside 10 regional conveners by the KwaZulu-Natal ANC provincial task team and directed to prepare for the upcoming elections.

In an exclusive interview on Tuesday morning, Mdladla said that as a citizen under the municipality, he also experiences service delivery problems, such as water and electricity cuts.

However, he would not want to publicly state his opinion about the possible causes before allowing the municipality leadership to present to him their version of what was causing these challenges.

“By the end of the next week, I would have met the mayor and our caucus in Msunduzi. I want to hear from them first about the challenges facing our municipality before the regional task team takes a position and gives our opinion as to how to overcome these challenges. Water and electricity are basic needs which our people cannot live without, so our main focus will be that and, of course, the city’s cleanliness issue also comes up,” he said.

On the political side, Mdladla said his regional task team will meet at the weekend for induction and draw a political programme of action, then hit the ground running.

On how to stop uMkhonto weSizwe Party’s (MKP) tsunami since it paralysed the ANC in last year’s general elections in the region, Mdladla said there is no special plan his task team will design for the MKP except to bring the ANC back to the people.

He added that the only downfall for the ANC was being aloof from the masses and that arrogance alienated it from the voters.

“My political plan is to take our party back to the masses. I think arrogance and complacency cost us. We were aloof from the masses, and we were punished. We need to humble ourselves and go back to the people, listen, and hear them,” concluded Mdladla.

Msunduzi is currently under the watchful eye of Premier Thamsanqa Ntuli’s intervention team, which is headed by former Public Works MEC Ravi Pillay.

The municipality and the region are one of the strategic centres of the ANC; it has the second biggest budget after eThekwini, and the region is also the second largest in the province. 

While trying to fix Msunduzi’s ailing administration, Mdladla will also have to double up as he faces a mammoth task of retaining all five municipalities under the region and also reclaiming Umngeni, which, for the first time in the history of local government, fell into the DA's hands in 2021. 

Mdladla is a former combatant of the party's liberation army, uMkhonto weSizwe, and he is currently the provincial secretary of the MK Military Veterans Association. He was trained in Tanzania at the age of 18.

Meanwhile, Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs MEC Reverend Thulasizwe Buthelezi has cautioned the municipal leadership to either cooperate with the forensic investigations over alleged maladministration or face consequences.

In a statement, Buthelezi said the municipality was refusing to cooperate with the Section 106 investigation his department initiated in March this year. 

willem.phungula@inl.co.za