Municipal union wins case forcing !Kheis municipality to cough up salaries

THE municipality of !Kheis in the Northern Cape has been forced by the High Court in Kimberley to pay salaries after the South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) took it, that province’s Premier, and the National Department of Co-Operative Governance and Traditional Affairs to court. 

The ruling, handed down recently, ordered the municipality to “immediately make payment of the salaries of the members of the applicant for February 2025 and March 2025 and to continue making payment of the salaries of the members of the applicant as it falls due”. 

In the decision, the Judge stated that “this unfortunate saga” involved a “municipality that is, like so many others in our country, in financial distress”.

The court bid, which was opposed by the MEC in the Northern Cape, stated that, in SAMWU’s notice of filing it alleged that “the Municipality was in serious and persistent material breach of its obligations to provide basic services and to meet its financial commitments as a result of a crisis in its financial affairs”. It also said that !Kheis was suffering a “crisis in its financial affairs”.

SAMWU also wanted the Municipality placed under the government equivalent of business rescue, requesting that the Department “implement a recovery plan aimed at securing the ability of the Municipality to meet its obligations to provide basic services”.

The A-G’s latest audit report on the Northern Cape with regards to the Public Finance Management Act found that there had been an improvement in audit outcomes, although it had made “No progress” towards “improving the reliability and usefulness of its annual performance report”.

There was also “no improvement in the quality of performance reports submitted for audit,” while there were also “increased levels of unauthorised, irregular, as well as fruitless and wasteful expenditure”. The report does not specifically mention the ! Kheis municipality. 

Following the publication of the A-G’s report, the Premier of the Northern Cape, Dr Zamani Saul, welcomed the outcomes, stating that the “audit results show a significant improvement in the province’s audit opinions for various Government Departments and entities for the audit cycle”. He noted that the eight clean audits were “the highest number recorded so far”.

!Kheis was, in 2023, named and shamed by Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana for failing to pay salaries for months. Last year, the A-G’s office indicated that, based on its latest audit outcomes as of March, the Municipality had received disclaimed audits for the past five years – a concerning position.