Acting municipal manager appointed
By Tabisa Mntengwana
24 November 2009
BUFFALO City Municipality named its acting municipal manager, Vusumuzi Mavuso, on Monday, 23 November.
Mavuso is a regional director in the City of Johannesburg, a position he has occupied since 2004.
Welcoming the new appointment, Executive Mayor Zukisa Faku said she hoped that he would follow his name and “rebuild this house of Buffalo City”. Vusumuzi means to rebuild the house.
She said Buffalo City had been without a municipal manager for the past 12 months. “During this period, we have had to appoint acting municipal managers from our pool of directors and acting directors, on a rotational basis.”
The biggest disadvantage of this practice was that nobody sat in office long enough to visualise and strategise development programmes for the municipality and its people. The incumbents were simply there to manage the day-to-day running of the municipality.
Mavuso has been seconded by Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Sicelo Shiceka to Buffalo City and will take up his new post immediately.
He will be solely responsible for the municipal manager’s duties. The appointment of a permanent person to fill the position came after the initiative was taken by the Office of the Executive Mayor to “approach the provincial and national governments for guidance and assistance out of the predicament of not having a person solely responsible for these duties”.
“The acting municipal manager will entrench stability and a clearly defined sense of direction for the municipality,” Faku added.
Mavuso is the chairperson of the Institute of Local Government in Gauteng province, a former trade unionist, activist and community development worker. He was a member of the provincial legislature in Gauteng from 1994 to 1999 and has served in several legislature committees.
In 1999, Mavuso represented Gauteng in the Public Service Commission.
Between 2000 and 2002, Mavuso was employed as the head of department for local government in Gauteng, before joining a private sector consultancy as a local government specialist.
He returned to the public service in 2004 as a regional director in the City of Johannesburg, where he has been until this latest move to Buffalo City.
Mavuso has a post-graduate qualification in management from the Public and Development Management School at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He has also completed several certificate programmes in management and local government.
He will be the acting municipal manager until further notice.
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