Tshwane Council Shamed Over Role In Airport's Neglect

Truant Tshwane MMC says there are plans to rehabilitate crippled Wonderboom National Airport after favoured managing company bails out

- Susan Puren

SINCE NOSEWEEK’S REPORT ABOUT THE mismanagement of Wonderboom National Airport that has been run into the ground, things have unravelled at speed, with several new developments including requests for the Mayor of Tshwane to intervene urgently. Wonderboom was once South Africa’s third-busiest airport with an average of 220 planes landing and taking off each day – a number that has reduced to just 60 a day.

Another plan

Tshwane’s MMC for roads and Transport, Sheila Lynn Senkubuge (DA), failed to respond to questions Noseweek sent her last month about the airport’s management. Instead she hurried off to tell a local knockand-drop newspaper, Rekord North, about the city’s plans for its once-proud asset: “We are going to commercialise the airport… that’s what our intention is and our long-term plan.”

For many of her colleagues in the Roads and Transport portfolio committee it is still a mystery as to how and where the MMC got this information, because she has not attended a single oversight meeting in 18 months.

Under the heading “Wonderboom Plans are finally unveiled” Rekord North of 4 October reported that Senkubuge had told them the municipality would soon be appointing a “transactional advisor” to manage the airport on behalf of the city.

“Commercialising Wonderboom Airport is most definitely not a new idea,” says Lex Middelberg, a former DA councillor and now the chairperson of the Tshwane Money Matters Caucus. In fact, it was stated in the council approved Airport Development Plan of 2004 and has been attempted since then through various appointments and investigations.