Major South African metro kisses R2 billion goodbye

Inaccurate billing systems, account manipulations, a lack of administrative oversight, and poor management resulted in the Ekurhuleni Municipality reporting a R2 billion revenue deficit between July and September 2024.

EWN reports that the R2 billion deficit was primarily due to tampering with electricity accounts, which saw some households and businesses underpaying for electricity.

At the same time, some had their outstanding balances erased from the system entirely.

Mayor Doctor Xhakaza says the municipality is turning the tide, having lost far less than R2 billion in the second and third quarters of the year.

“From quarter one’s R2 billion, we took it down to R587 million in the next quarter, it went down to R416 million. So you’ll agree with me that there’s been a huge intervention in that area,” he said.

Following the resolution of an Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipal Council meeting held on 27 March 2025, the municipality placed chief information officer Moloko Monyepao on precautionary suspension.

“This decision arises from serious allegations of mismanagement related to financial losses incurred by the City,” it said.

It added that the issues relate to inaccurate billing systems, interim meter readings, account manipulations, insufficient administrative oversight, and poor management of business systems.

The municipality’s council has authorised City Manager Imogen Mashazi to appoint an independent investigator to examine the allegations within the next 30 days thoroughly.

“The precautionary suspension of Mr Monyepao is deemed necessary to ensure the integrity of the investigation is maintained, and to uphold good governance principles, accountability, and transparency within the City administration,” it said.

However, Monyepao isn’t backing down. City Press reports that he is taking the municipality to court over his suspension, which he alleges is unlawful and a malicious move to oust him.

In an affidavit filed as part of an urgent labour court application, Monyepao described the suspension as “removal by hook or crook for ulterior motives”.

He argued that his contract would have ended and his employment would have been terminated by the time the matter was finalised.

“I would probably struggle to find employment,” he added.

Ekurhuleni spokesperson Phakamile Mbengashe confirmed to City Press that the metro is aware of and has opposed the labour court application.

Load-shedding battle with Eskom

The Ekurhuleni Municipality has created a headache for South Africa’s state-owned power utility on several occasions, with Eskom and the metro swapping control of its load-shedding schedules several times in the past.

Eskom revoked the city’s management of its rotational power cuts on 25 July 2023 after it failed to load-shed customers as instructed by the National Rationalised Specifications (NRS) Code of Practice.

“The City of Ekurhuleni failed to comply by not adhering to the NRS 049-9:2019 code of practice, which requires electricity distributor licence holders to reduce load during a declaration of a system emergency,” Eskom said.

“The decision to take over load-shedding in Ekurhuleni follows monitoring and analysis conducted by Eskom, which indicate that Ekurhuleni is not reducing the load as per NRS 049-9:2019.”

It wasn’t the first time the state-owned power utility had to intervene regarding load-shedding in Ekurhuleni, and it wasn’t the last either.

Eskom handed back control of load-shedding in Ekurhuleni to the municipality a few days later, after it assured the power utility that it had put controls in place to address the challenges that prevented it from complying with the NRS code.

“Eskom will continue to monitor [Ekurhuleni] and other municipalities to ensure that they implement load-shedding accordingly,” it said.

“Eskom will take over the load-shedding of any municipality that fails to comply for whatever reason, even after it has been engaged on the matter, as with Ekurhuleni.”

However, less than a year later, the power utility was forced to take control of the metro’s load-shedding once again.

On 29 February 2024, Eskom said the Ekurhuleni Municipality had again failed to adhere to the NRS 048-9:2019 code of practice.

Its monitoring and analysis of the metro’s electricity supply showed that Ekurhuleni didn’t reduce load as required.

“Eskom brought to the attention of the City, on numerous occasions, its failure to loadshed its customers in keeping with the agreed regulations,” the power utility said.

“The code of practice requires electricity distribution licence holders to reduce load during the declaration of a system emergency.”