Tshwane council to deliberate CFO’s fate

The Tshwane municipal council will on Thursday (5 March) convene for a special meeting “for purposes of considering a report on allegations of misconduct against a senior manager”.

Moneyweb has learnt that this refers to a complaint by Republican Conference of Tshwane councillor Lex Middelberg against CFO Gareth Mnisi, who he alleges misrepresented himself in the resume that got him his current job in 2023 and is guilty of serious misconduct.

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At that time the council was governed by a multiparty coalition under the leadership of Cilliers Brink of the DA. It was ousted in September 2024 and the current ActionSA/ANC coalition is at the helm.

Allegations relate to access to tenders

DA caucus leader Jacqui Uys questions the timing of the complaint and says while she cannot comment on the veracity of the allegations against Mnisi, she believes the attack is related to access to tenders.

A well-informed source within the administration expressed the same sentiment to Moneyweb.

The ANC’s Greater Tshwane Region has called for Mnisi’s suspension, referencing his “unexplained wealth”, ballooning unauthorised, irregular and fruitless expenses in the metro, and tender-related issues, among other things.

Middelberg wrote to city manager Johann Mettler, indicating his intention to also lay criminal charges against Mnisi. Middelberg said he previously tried to bring the issues he raised to the attention of the finance oversight committee and council but was silenced or ignored.

He accuses Mettler of failing in his “duty to vet and verify the CV that Mr Mnisi had submitted when he applied for the position of CFO …”.

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Middelberg says his investigations “have been predicated by a media report about Mr Mnisi’s divorce proceedings, in which an inexplicable fabulous wealth was revealed that I estimate in the region of R80 million that Mr Mnisi had accumulated in less than ten years since he left university”.

“In this time, if you review his CV, he had only ever been a full-time salaried employee of first National Treasury, then Thaba Chweu Municipality, then Chief Alfred Luthuli Municipality, followed by a stint at Rand West City before he was appointed by the City of Tshwane.

“His salary as a civil servant throughout this time is known and it can never even remotely explain his sudden accumulation of the fabulous wealth described in the judgement on the interim maintenance order by Judge Liebenberg.”

Living the good life

Middelberg attached to his complaint the court order that paints a picture of a young couple benefitting from trusts that own multiple luxury properties, had ownership or use of supercars and luxury vehicles, and enjoyed frequent overseas visits – flying first class.

The court repeatedly questioned the source of the wealth and Minisi’s failure to be open and honest about it.

Middelberg describes how he served requests for information in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (Paia) on all the previous employers Mnisi mentioned in his CV.

He concluded that:

• Mnisi was never employed by National Treasury as he claimed. He was in fact appointed as a consultant at the Thaba Chweu Local Municipality to assist with a compulsory programme required by National Treasury to enhance Thaba Chweu’s financial management capacity, and was paid by the municipality.
• Mnisi’s claims of clean audits and 95% achievement of key performance indicators during his stint as CFO at the Chief Albert Luthuli Local Municipality does not correspond with the Auditor-General (AG) reports for those periods.
• Mnisi is an active director of five companies but has never declared his involvement with or earnings from such companies or the trusts to the City of Tshwane.
• Middelberg rubbishes Mnisi’s claims about his period at Thaba Chweu, including that he “ensured compliance with contractual, local, provincial and national laws and regulations” and points to repeated disclaimers from the AG.
• He also questions Mnisi’s role in a disastrous public-private partnership (PPP) with the China Sinogy Electric Engineering Co (CSEEC) for the construction of the Duma substation in Mpumalanga.

Middelberg asks for the immediate suspension of Mnisi pending a formal investigation by council into his allegations.

Metro’s budget

His complaint comes against the background of Tshwane’s adjustment budget that was adopted last week and which the deputy mayor, the ANC’s Eugene Modise, claimed is credible and funded.

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However, a leaked presentation that Mnisi gave to the budget steering committee before the adjustment budget was passed shows a declining collection rate of 83.5% and material cash shortfalls with billions of outstanding payments to creditors, largely to small businesses and expenditure beyond the budget limits.

The DA has in response written to National Treasury, asking for an intervention.

It maintains, among other things, that the City of Tshwane’s expenditure is vastly underreported due to delayed invoices and that this, together with poor collections, undermines the assumption that the budget is funded.