Johannesburg - The mayor of the City of Joburg, Mpho Phalatse, has been accused of concealing the arrest of the acting city manager Bryne Maduka, after a dispute with a ratepayer.
Maduka was allegedly arrested and taken to a local prison and the Midrand police station.
Al-Jama-Ah leader Thapelo Amad told The Star that he had it on good authority that Maduka was arrested last Thursday and held for a day before he was released.
“We have been informed on good authority, and we have been waiting for her to say something. She has to take the residents into confidence about what happened; we are worried that the city is going through chaos and the mayor seems to be absent from what is happening,” Amad said.
Amad said he had been informed that the ratepayer involved in Maduka’s arrest had been involved in a dispute with the city and that the matter was now before the courts.
He said the ratepayer had acquired an interdict to stop the city from cutting off service for non-payment of rates, but the city went ahead and cut off the service. The violation of the court order apparently resulted in Maduka’s arrest.
Responding to the allegations, the mayor’s office told The Star that Maduka was not arrested, but there was a warrant for his arrest as the accounting officer in the city.
“The acting city manager, Bryne Maduka, was not arrested. There was a warrant of arrest in respect of a customer dispute with the City of Joburg, and Mr Maduka was the subject of the warrant only because he is the City’s accounting officer,” Phalatse’s spokesperson Mabine Seabe said.
He said the matter was resolved before the warrant of arrest was executed and that the matter had been settled.
The Star understands that Maduka had been under pressure to collect revenue for the city. The city is believed to be in a financial crisis, so much so that service providers and other SMMEs have not been paid for months.
Last year, Avis also repossessed cars that the city had been renting because the contract had expired. The multiparty government has been trying to get a R2 billion loan from the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) approved. The loan was supposed to solve the cash flow problem in the city.
Over the past few months, the city has gone on an energetic campaign to collect revenue from residents and businesses who have been defaulting on their payments.
The Star