The DA in Ugu welcomes the long overdue resignation of the Municipal Manager, Thabisile Ndlela. She has given a month’s notice with her last day being 24 October 2024.
The resignation comes after much controversy surrounding Ndlela that led the DA to lodge charges of misconduct and dereliction of duty against her and the Mayor, Councillor Mbali Cele-Luthuli.
Ndlela had also been involved in a court battle with the DA. When she had unlawfully tried to expropriate an Executive Council seat belonging to the party. In January 2024, the Durban High Court ruled in favor of the DA.
In the municipality, we succeeded in getting the KwaZulu-Natal Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) MEC to recognize the extremely dysfunctional manner in which the Umdoni leadership and Senior Management were handling the governance and services.
The collapse of services, the systematic neglect of public infrastructure and the maladministration of the institution, led to inevitable protests from a variety of stakeholders. This in turn led to the closure of Umdoni without any reasonable attempts by the political leadership or senior management to deal with the collapse they had engineered.
Their contempt for ratepayers and residents, their abuse of resources for political expedience and a belief that their control was absolute, allowed a governance style best described as abusive and reckless.
Ndlela’s resignation marks the beginning of the end to a long reign of destruction under the African National Congress in Umdoni. The DA is fully committed to exposing the rot in Umdoni, pursuing those responsible for losses and neglect, and restoring good governance in an area that has always held promise for the people who live in it.