When it emerged earlier in the year that the ANC-controlled Msunduzi Municipality was paying each of the 24 cronies appointed by now suspended municipal manager Bheki Nene over R400,000 per annum, the IFP wondered whether and how long the Pietermaritzburg city budget can sustain Nene, his formidable entourage, and indeed itself.

The "amicable settlement" to the alleged tune of R1 million which his former employers this week reached with Nene, answers any questions the IFP, or the ratepayers who have been kept in the dark and who will be footing the bill in the end, may have had about the Municipality's wisdom in rendering Nene's "services".

It is hardly comforting to know that delivery was not one of them. "The funds the Msunduzi Municipality had so generously lavished on Nene must be missing elsewhere and indeed they are," said Inkosi Bonga Mdletshe, MPP and IFP KwaZulu-Natal Spokesperson on Local Government.

Inkosi Mdletshe also said:

"Pietermaritzburg suffers from anything and everything from maladministration, through housing shortages to daily battles between formal and informal traders who fight for their limited place in the sun on the city's untidy streets."

"These are the real issues we are all grappling with in Pietermaritzburg."

"The smokescreen around Nene and his cronies has only blurred them from the sight of the Msunduzi Municipality. The IFP and the ratepayers have been vigilant all along."