Guess who’s back

Board, officials surprised as Voges returns to top MBDA job

PIERRE Voges is back at the helm of the Mandela Bay Development Agency (MBDA). Voges, who left the agency when his contract ended in March, returned to the R150 000a-month post on April 21 on a monthly contract basis. His return – which came as a surprise to board members and some senior municipal officials – was never announced to the public by the municipality or the MBDA.

It is unclear who authorised Voges’s return, following a series of on-again, off-again decisions to keep him or let him go. Voges has been at the centre of a power struggle between the municipality and the MBDA board. The city, under instructions from mayor Danny Jordaan, wanted his contract renewed on a monthly basis until after the elections.

But the board wanted the post advertised. The power struggle resulted in the municipality dissolving the board on April 5, just days after the board let Voges go. But the municipality’s decision was overturned later by an interim order from the Port Elizabeth High Court after an application from four MBDA board members – chairman Motse Mfuleni, Advocate Luvuyo Bono, Lucky Gosani and Samkelo Dlulane.

 Voges said yesterday he had returned on the advice of his lawyers, who had told him that a March 9 decision by the board to extend his contract on a month-to-month basis was valid as no subsequent meeting had been held to reverse it.

“The last meeting of the MBDA board that was disbanded – I actually don’t know what to call it – was on March 9,” he said. “At that meeting, as contained in the papers in the court application, the board said that my contract [should] be extended on a month-to-month basis until the post is advertised and a new chief executive [is] in place.”

On why he had waited until two weeks ago to resume his duties, Voges said: “I sought legal advice from a labour lawyer on what I needed to do.

“I did that in the 20 days I was away, and the legal advice was, ‘Pierre, there was a board in place that made a decision on the month-to-month thing and you must return to work until the new board decides what will happen to you’.

“No city manager or mayor can call me back. “They have no powers. They may wish they had, but [they] don’t. It is the board’s decision alone,” Voges said.

Mfuleni said yesterday that the March 9 meeting cited by Voges had not finalised the decision to extend his contract.

He said the matter had been left hanging as Voges was unhappy with the lack of security related to a monthly contract.

Asked if the board had authorised Voges’s return, Mfuleni said: “No, not at all. I heard from people that he was back.

“Instead, I sent him an e-mail asking him who had said he could come back to work and he said nobody did.

“I told him that he was not supposed to be at work and requested that he stay at home until the board says otherwise.”

Mfuleni said the March 9 meeting had not made any decision on Voges’s future, with the final decision not to renew his contract communicated to him on the eve of its expiration date.

Deputy mayor Bicks Ndoni, who represents the municipality in the MBDA, said earlier in the day that he was not aware that Voges was back.

Later, he referred questions to acting city manager Johann Mettler.

Mettler said Voges’s appointment had been confirmed to him in writing.

“The new board will deal with this matter when it meets shortly,” Mettler said.

Asked if he or the mayor’s office had told Voges to return after the board had told him not to return on April 1, Mettler said: “The board did not instruct him not to return.

“That was an unmandated letter from the chairperson [Mfuleni] contradicting the previous board decision.

“Our legal advice indicated that the letter had no legal validity.”

Asked if he had instructed Voges to return, Mettler said he did not have the authority to do so.

“[It’s] his own legal advice. Please confirm with him [Voges].”

Meanwhile, Voges led a briefing yesterday outlining the duties of the new stadium operator to potential bidders.

Voges said the new operator had to come with extensive experience in stadium management and should not be focused only on running the stadium bowl, but develop the area into a precinct that would also generate income.

“We are looking for something different to what we have now so that the R2.4-billion [spent on the stadium’s construction] doesn’t continue being a liability for the city, but [becomes] an asset,” Voges said.

Existing stadium operator Access Management’s contract expires on June 30, effectively giving the municipality less than two months to find a new company.

Due to the tight timeframe, the municipality is taking a two-phase approach and is looking for an operator to run the stadium for just a year, while the bidding process for a 15-year contract gets under way.

Mettler said bidders had been asked to give ideas of how they would run the stadium for a year.

“Our immediate timeframe is that we are looking at appointing an operator on July 1 and we are doing everything in our power to make that happen,” he said.

“We are then giving ourselves leeway within the first year to negotiate what the next 15 years could look like, so we are looking at it in a two-phase approach,” Mettler said.

“We are certainly looking at the stadium and its surrounds through new eyes.”

Ten companies, including Access Management, expressed their interest in bidding.

The closing date for submissions is May 20, at noon.