The office of the Executive Mayor of Buffalo City, the municipal administration as well as Buffalo City as a whole have suffered a grievous loss with the sudden and untimely passing of Matthew Moonieya, Director of Executive Mayoral Support, on Friday while on official duty as part of a delegation to our twin city Gävle in Sweden.

After being head-hunted by Sindisile Maclean, the first Executive Mayor of a post-transition Buffalo City, Matthew became a tireless worker and advocate for the betterment of the broader city and its people, and threw himself whole-heartedly into the business of assisting the Mayoral office in transforming and stabilising the municipality's administration, and building the image of the new municipality.

This was at times no easy task as Buffalo City's political leadership faced both internal and external challenges to the integrity of its executive authority.

Recognised as a man of loyalty and principle, Matthew's value to the municipality was recognised, even after Maclean's recruitment to the senior management corps of the public service, when he recently accepted an offer of continued employment in Buffalo City from the new political leadership on my own recommendation.

Unbeknown to many citizens who may at times have struggled to understand the civic complexities of City Hall based on media coverage alone, Matthew spent many a long and irregular hour trying to ensure that a fairer and more accurate picture of the city was reflected to the public.

A journalist by training, Matthew understood keenly the fact that the commercial media would always spin the angle that best served its interests and played to the gallery of its readership. He was therefore well-equipped to fulfil the critical back-room role of providing support to the political leadership of Council in strategic communications and public relations.

While at times this may not have endeared him to editors, it will remain a fact that many of the mayoral sound-bytes of the past few years flowed from his keyboard.

With an employment contract that made no mention of special financial reward for walking the extra mile, Matthew's loyalty, humility and a personal ethos derived from his Christian faith kept him believing in a local government that could become more effective, more efficient, more service-oriented and more people-centred.

In pursuing this vision, he was no work-to-rule bureaucrat, and in fact had a healthy disdain for the red tape that often seems to slow down municipal decision-making and service-delivery.

In his new and recently expanded role, Matthew had taken on the massive task of overseeing both the critical programmes of public participation as well as the articulation of a high-level City Development Strategy that aimed to create positive economic momentum for Buffalo City, to leverage massive investment in key infrastructures and ultimately to broaden access to the better life towards which we all continue to work. The balancing act inherent in these tasks required the kind of sensitive pragmatism that Matthew possessed in abundance.

Buffalo City owes a debt of gratitude to Matthew's immediate family for supporting him in the selfless work that he did to advance and defend the interests of the City. Our sympathies are extended to Gaye and their son, as well as Matthew's family from a previous marriage, whose pain and loss we share. We will miss him.

Zintle Peter
EXECTUIVE MAYOR