For years Durban’s municipal bus service has been in a mess. City manager S’bu Sithole accepts this, earlier this month telling a city council meeting that the bus service had been defective for the best part of a decade.

The acknowledgment of the many problems can be regarded as a breakthrough, but as the city boss, what does Sithole plan to do about it?

“There appears to have been a comedy of errors,” Sithole says. “What we have to do now is look at what the options are, what route we can take.” He says things started going wrong with the bus service when it was first privatised in 2003, and that the municipality is working on developing a new financially viable model .

A few days after Sithole’s report to the council’s executive committee there were further ructions , including the threat that the contracts of certain city officials would be terminated. Asked for more details, Sithole said he could not provide these as “processes had to be followed”.

Related possible action against city officials and councillors is aired in the Manase report, an audit of and investigation into council matters by forensic audit firm Manase & Associates. A number of current and former councillors may face action as a result of the report.

“It may take some time to act on certain findings . We have to decide on how best to follow up ,” Sithole says.

The bus privatisation deal of 2003 was hailed as the municipality’s biggest black empowerment transaction . What was then called the Durban Transport service was sold to the Remant and Alton Coach Africa Consortium for R70m. Many benefits were promised to ratepayers, including savings of about R40m/ year.

“Not long after the deal [was concluded], the bus service started to have problems. Now we are looking at what we can do,” says Sithole.

“We have to facilitate a service over which we have some control, which was not the case earlier with private operators. Critically, a service must be provided on a sustainable basis, and it has to be implemented as soon as possible.”

Ratepayers are sceptical. Lilian Develing, head of the Combined Ratepayers’ Association of Durban, says: “The wheels are falling off. ” She feels part of the problem is that council employees who were operating the service “didn’t know what they were doing”. She agrees the service should be returned to the city .

In Sithole’s report to the council he outlined how, in 2008, the municipality finally intervened, buying back the buses and equipment for R405m. The following year it terminated the contract with the consortium. Then Tansnat Africa was appointed to run a “reduced service” on a monthly basis. An outcry followed as other local bus operators complained the contract had not been put out to tender. It was subsequently ruled to be illegal.

But despite this, Tansnat is still in charge of bus transport .

“That is another problem . Tansnat cannot continue with the service. That is why we are urgently exploring other options. One is to look at whether we, the municipality, should be running the buses again,” Sithole says.

But there are obstacles that will have to be negotiated in terms of legislation under the Local Government Municipal Systems Act and the National Land Transport Act, he says. Basically the legislation limits what the municipality can do to fund a municipal bus operator. It would have to be separated from the municipality and subsidies would have to be paid in terms of a service contract.

“It will involve forming a separate subsidiary so that subsidies for the bus service can be paid into that. This is a further matter we are working on.”

Another element of the plan is to integrate an expanded bus, rail and taxi service. “Commuters will be able to buy one card that offers them three modes of transport,” says Sithole. He can’t yet tell when this new service will be implemented, saying it depends on grants from the department of transport.

Sithole says that within six months the council will be in a position to say what has to be done.

The debate in the council now is whether, if running the bus service is again contracted out, it should go to multiple operators or a single one.

But perhaps, as has been suggested, the city should just operate the bus service itself once it has surmounted the legislative requirements. It seemed to be doing a reasonable job of this before 2003 — certainly much better than the fragmented, irregular service now in place.

Sithole seems to agree. “To be blunt, I think it would be better if we started running the service again. The private operators have not worked out.”