Free State Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs MEC Sakie Mofokeng says he has faced pushback from some councillors after discovering that they had applied and been shortlisted for interviews in the same municipalities they serve.
According to provincial insiders, the councillors were trying to secure jobs because they were uncertain whether they would return as councillors after the 2026 local government elections in November.
“You find councillors in their own municipality who have applied and are shortlisted for interviews to become employees of the same municipality they lead,” Mofokeng told the Mail & Guardian in a wide-ranging interview last week. “When you intervene to correct that particular situation, there’s pushback.
“You can never have a councillor applying and being shortlisted, as happened with councillors of Mohokare Local Municipality who wanted to appoint themselves. There’s no way that the provincial government can interview me for a position in the administration while I’m serving as an executive.”
Some councillors in Mohokare Local Municipality have accused Mofokeng of removing an elected mayor and a municipal manager who had been appointed by council and replacing them with people from his office.
A source in the municipality told the publication that Mofokeng was doing that to secure resources through the municipality in order to fund his ANC campaign before the next provincial conference.
Another source told the M&G that in municipalities where Mofokeng did not have people he could manipulate, he used service delivery failures to gain control.
“Once he puts the municipality under administration, he uses his people as administrators without the control of the council so that he can do whatever he wants. The reason he does this is because he cannot control the council.
“This is just a battle over resources and has nothing to do with fixing local government. I’m a member of the ANC. If you are saying you are putting these municipalities under Section 139 while there is a deployment committee policy of the organisation, you are basically saying the organisation is failing because those deployed come from the ANC.”
Mofokeng dismissed the allegations, saying they were part of a fightback campaign by those the crackdown affected.
His detractors, he said, had resorted to slander and malicious allegations that could never be substantiated, adding that everything done by the provincial government and Cogta was above board and open to scrutiny.
“I can confirm that there is nowhere we are going to be found wanting in terms of the decisions we have taken,” said Mofokeng. “The MEC will never be appointed without the provincial executive council (exco). It is a fallacy that Mofokeng is running amok unless they provide evidence as to how Mofokeng hired his people.
“Beneficiaries of capture and disorder will fight back because they want to protect their immediate benefits but we are not going to hold back. We will push back.”
Mofokeng said that in every municipality where the government had intervened, including those placed under Section 139 administration, the decisions were made by the provincial government and not by him alone.
He said the province had deployed exco representatives to struggling municipalities and those representatives were appointed by exco, not by him.
“The argument that one is running amok is far from the truth. These are exco resolutions and provincial government decisions made in accordance with the laws of the land.
“The law is instructive: when municipalities are unable to fulfil their constitutional obligations, the provincial government, through Cogta, must intervene,” he said.
“There are people who will not be happy that we are intervening. Some of those people are in the administration and some are at a political level.
“We have experienced pushback and we don’t mind because we know it comes with the territory. We have taken it head-on and we are happy that we have pushed through. We are in a number of municipalities to make sure we are closing the gaps.”
Part of the reason Free State municipalities had failed to fulfil their mandates was because people with little to no expertise had been appointed to senior roles, he said.
Municipalities would hire senior managers from other municipalities who had either been removed over corruption scandals or presided over the collapse of those municipalities.
“I’m happy that municipalities have begun recruiting the right personnel in the right way and that’s what we ask. Municipalities that are not adhering to the law can be taken to court so that we can seek declaratory orders against appointments that are wrong and illegal.”
A director or city manager was a permanent employee, Mofokeng said. “Once you appoint that person, they will be there for years. If it is the wrong appointment, it will harm the people and the municipality and we cannot allow that.”
Free State municipalities have struggled to obtain clean audits. Many have failed to provide basic services because of the systemic corruption the province has been fighting against for years.
In February during her State of the Province address, Premier MaQueen Letsoha-Mathae vowed to fix struggling municipalities, declaring 2026 a “year of decisive action” for local government reform.
Mofokeng said that since taking office, the provincial government had prioritised clean audits and improved audit outcomes, adding that audit action plans had been adopted to help turn municipalities around.
“The first phase was to stabilise and stop the downward spiral. The second phase was to begin seeing improvements and we are happy that we are no longer seeing excessive regressions,” he said, adding that they were encouraged by progress in municipalities including Maluti-a-Phofung, Dihlabeng, Kopanong, Setsoto and Matjhabeng.
He conceded, however, that some municipalities remained stagnant, including Mangaung Metro.
Free State Cogta MEC Sakie Mofokeng says councillors who applied for jobs in the municipalities they serve are resisting provincial interventions aimed at fixing dysfunctional local government, amid accusations that he is using Section 139 administrations to consolidate political control
