The DA in Nelson Mandela Bay (NMB) can reveal that during the 2024/2025 financial year the Metro only spent 22% of its safety and security capital budget.
R17.35 million of the R31.924 million budget was allocated to the “Safer City” capital project, which fell flat as no contract was put in place to deliver the work. A further R5 million was allocated to a troop carrier tender which was non-responsive.
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Sadly, this underspending debacle is part of a much broader trend that has emerged under this ANC/EFF coalition of corruption, which is either stealing money or simply not spending it at all.
Part of the problem is the total lack of oversight from the Metro’s budget performance monitoring forum, which should sit quarterly to ensure that service delivery spending is on track. It did not sit for 588 days, between 22 February 2024 and 2 October 2025.
This ANC/EFF coalition of corruption and their small party pals are totally and utterly out of their depth, unable to organise committee oversight meetings let alone spend budget on rolling out critical safety programs. All this while our mothers, fathers, sons and daughters are facing an epidemic of crime across the metro.
I have written to the NMB MMC: Budget and Treasury, Cllr Khanya Ngqisha (EFF) and MMC: Safety and Security, Cllr Luyanda Lawu (ANC), to express my concern at their governance failures.
With a DA government in NMB, harmful underspending like this would be a thing of the past. Every cent of public money would be spent on service delivery and crime-stopping programs. Committees would sit as often as required and oversight would be non-negotiable.
If elected Mayor, I commit to installing at least 200 high-tech cameras in crime hotspots. I will ensure that the Joint Operations Centre is fully operational and that all camera feeds are monitored 24/7 so that the moment a crime occurs, emergency services can be dispatched.
It is time for a new NMB government. It is time to get NMB working again.