New Johannesburg mayor Jolidee Matongo has vowed to crack the whip and take action against city officials who slept on the job and frustrated the implementation of the ANC-led metro’s service delivery programmes.

Speaking after an uncontested election to the economic hub’s highest office, Matongo said there would be serious consequences for officials for the failure to adequately spend the R73bn budget of the city, which he said had happened in the past financial year.

Tomorrow, the former finance MMC is expected to announce 10 members of the mayoral committee who will form his municipal cabinet and be drawn from the ANC caucus and its coalition partners, including the IFP, AIC, Cope, Al Jamah and the UDM.

Matongo said he and the government of local unity (GLU) would not tolerate continued refusal by officials to implement some of the services that had been budgeted for as well as failing to address reported service delivery failures.

“For instance, we budgeted R175-million in the past financial year to provide food for the food insecure in our city and the money was not spent by the relevant department,” he said.

Matongo's inaugural remarks and warning to officials came after the ANC was accused of interfering with administration in the city since taking over in 2019, which the party refuted.

“What we are going to be doing without any fear or favour is to ensure that those who are assigned the responsibility to deliver services do so and if people don’t play ball and spend the money, we don’t have time to waste and they will have to go and sit at home. If we have to meet them at the labour court we will do so,” Matongo said.

Matongo said officials had to “play ball” as the ANC had placed expectations on him and other deployees to create something to show to voters ahead of the upcoming elections, which are expected to take place in February next year if the push to postpone them further than the promulgated October 27 date succeeds.

“If you don’t play ball and you don’t do your work, you don’t have space in our administration. We don’t have time. The ANC expects us and all other political parties to have something to show to the electorate when we come to the next election, so we are not going to be hugging each other and saying it's fine, it can be done later,” he said.

Matongo was upfront that, with only a maximum of six months as the mayor of the current administration, there was no room for many new programmes other than implementing those that had been budgeted for in the IDP (integrated development plan) which was approved by council in May.

He said on top of the priorities of the current administration as he takes over was financial sustainability of the city to ensure that the metro met its obligations.

“In order for us to do all the grand plans that we have, it will not be possible if we do not have the financial resources, therefore financial responsibility is part of our top priorities,” he said.

DA caucus leader Leah Knott said the party had decided to abandon its plan to also contest for the mayoral post and instead chose to take the opposition benches to hold the ANC-led coalition to account and focus on the upcoming municipal elections.