Former Presidency director-general Cassius Lubisi will spearhead a Section 154 intervention in the ailing eThekwini municipality, Cogta MEC Bongiwe Nomusa Sithole-Moloi has revealed.

The KwaZulu-Natal government and the troubled eThekwini municipality was tight-lipped about or unaware of the metro's governing status until Sithole-Moloi confirmed the intervention in the legislature on Tuesday. 

Section 154 of the Constitution allows the national government "to support and strengthen" municipalities' capacity to handle their own affairs and their ability to perform functions.

If the municipality fails to reverse course, one of the steps it could be subjected to involves the use of Section 139, which includes putting a municipality under administration.

The municipality has been marred by a myriad of administration failures, ranging from its failure to spend grants on time; fraud allegations against the incumbent municipal manager, Musa Mbhele; bogus qualifications surrounding human resources manager Kim Makhathini; a litany of questions around service delivery, corruption and fraud cases; and an exodus of R47 billion in disinvestment, among other issues. 

Sithole-Moloi said the Cabinet made the Section 154 decision.

"We aren't naive to the challenges that eThekwini is facing," Sithole-Moloi said. She said Lubisi would be assisted by two other senior bureaucrats.

This comes as the ANC's national working committee (NWC) is expected to touch down on Friday to have discussions with the party's provincial leadership. 

At the meeting, they will discuss, among other issues, council's losses, according to an ANC NWC source.

"There may be challenges in eThekwini. It's an open secret. The president (Cyril Ramaphosa) is committed. He's already brought a team of ministers, including Cogta Minister (Thembisile) Nkadimeng," provincial ANC secretary Bheki Mtolo said in an interview with News24.

Mtolo said ANC officials met about the issue in late April after the ANC's national executive committee met.

"They were here in eThekwini. They met in eThekwini. They are now going to develop a turnaround strategy and all that. Working with the province, they're going to put a team together," Mtolo said.

He batted away suggestions that the invocation was a vote of no-confidence against Mxolisi Kaunda's mayorship.

"Remember Mayor Kaunda is leading a council of more than 200. You can't say it's him per se. What you fail to understand is that in government, it's not a dictatorship system," Mtolo said. 

He suggested that not having a clear majority in the council impeded the ANC to a degree.

"Not everything that he (Kaunda) does or wishes will pass in council," Mtolo said, adding that some issues, service delivery priorities, weren't always delegated to the executive committee.

"I'm trying to say it will be naïve of us to say it's Kaunda. That would be an answer that lacks capacity to go beyond [the surface]," he said. 

Mtolo said the support would come in the form of "technical teams" of "engineers, artisans and all that... People who have capacity".

eThekwini municipality spokesperson Princess Nkabane said: "Please, can you refer your query to Cogta as they would be best placed to respond."

Calls to Kaunda were unanswered.

eThekwini Speaker Thabani Nyawose said he wasn't aware of the intervention.

Opposition politicians, both at local and provincial levels, were oblivious to the invocation and said they had not received any relevant communication.

Nkadimeng promised to respond to News24 but had not done so at the time of writing.

The DA's Cogta spokesperson, Martin Meyer, said in a statement that the party had been "reliably told" that Nkadimeng intervened through Section 154 at the municipality. 

"The intervention is based on the numerous failures of the ANC, including the failure of the eThekwini municipality, to spend its grant funding," Meyer said. 

"This move is a clear indication of the seriousness of the collapse of the metro in eThekwini. It is a sad day that the provincial government, being well aware of the failures and challenges facing eThekwini, have not acted sooner, leading to national government having to take action on this matter."