By Akani Nkuna
The DA in KwaZulu-Natal has called for the immediate suspension of eThekwini Executive Director for Technical Services Ednick Msweli, saying weak leadership is responsible for the city’s worsening water crisis.
The city experiences water outages on a daily bases over multiple wards, some lasting for days.
DA mayoral candidate for eThekwini Municipality Haniff Hoosen told supporters a picket at the eThekwini Water and Sanitation depot in Pinetown on Thursday that Msweli should be suspended for presiding over a period that has seen the municipality experience severe water leaks and water losses of 65%.
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“Water losses are increasing, thousands of leaks remain active, communities are suffering and billions are wasted yet accountability remains conspicuously absent. There must be consequences for failure,” he said.
“Today I am calling on the mayor of our city and the municipal manager to suspend the Executive Director of Water and Sanitation, Ednick Msweli with immediate effect. This is not about making him a political scapegoat, but it is about establishing accountability. When a department fails this badly, the person responsible for that department must answer for that failure.”
Msweli has led the city’s water unit for years, and was appointed Executive Director for Technical Services in November 2025, a portfolio that oversees several departments, including Water and Sanitation, Waste Management, the eThekwini Transport Authority and Road Infrastructure Management.
The DA has previously objected to his appointment and those of two other senior executives. The party approached the Durban High Court in November last year, demanding that the appointments be reviewed and set aside, saying the decision to appoint them was inconsistent with the Constitution and therefore invalid.
“The Municipal failed to comply with the mandatory requirements for appointment set out in the regulations on Appointment and Conditions or Employment of Senior Managers,” said the DA in its papers presented to the court.
The court is yet to make a ruling on the matter.
Hoosen said Msweli continues to earn millions from the city while his work and contributions do not “match accountabilty, performance and results”, reiterating that Msweli’s appointment could no longer be justified.
Hoosen presented a Water Management Plan focusing on investment, the professionalisation of the department and holding municipal officials accountable.
He said the party was committed to investing a minimum of R10 billion in the immediate term to rebuild and repair the water network to ensure communities have drinking water from their taps, while reducing reliance on water tankers.
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“We will unlock funding to cut non-essential expenditure, recover the R50 billion debts, maximise our ground funding and prioritise credible infrastructure. Secondly, we will protect the water revenue. Money collected for water must be used for water. Every Rand collected for a training service must be protected and directed towards fixing the pipes,” Hoosen said.
Hoosen also said the party would introduce performance scorecards to ensure senior managers work towards measurable targets, enabling their progress to be tracked and assessed. He emphasised that any manager who failed to meet those targets without clear justification would be held accountable.
He also referred to the potential involvement of the private sector in addressing some of the city’s water challenges, saying: “we do not care who fixes the pipe; what we care about is that the pipes are fixed.”
“We also want to investigate the so called water mafia, we’ve had enough. We will investigate every procurement — the contractors, the illegal connections, the water tankering, and internal municipal values. And where corruption, deliberate negligence and wrongdoing is found, there is going to be consequences,” said Hoosen.
