DA ready to lead Tshwane again

The DA is working on organising a virtual council sitting to elect leadership for the embattled City of Tshwane as it hopes to reclaim the mayoral position.

This comes after the Pretoria High Court issued a scathing judgment reversing the Gauteng executive’s decision to place the Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality under administration and dissolve the council.

DA Gauteng provincial chairperson Mike Moriarty told City Press that a meeting of all the political party chief whips was due to take place today to decide when the council sitting would be held.

He said team administrators – led by the City’s head administrator, Mpho Nawa – had been given until Friday to vacate their offices in terms of the ruling.

The judgment found that Lebogang Maile, Gauteng MEC of cooperative governance and traditional affairs, had dealt poorly with the situation in Tshwane.

Although the MEC’s initial decision to intervene in the failed council meeting was believed to have been valid, the court questioned whether the specific action taken by the Gauteng executive to dissolve the council was appropriate.

His attempts to have council speaker Katlego Mathebe removed from her position because of her alleged misconduct highlighted the fact that his focus was not on dealing with the numerous failed council meetings.

Judge Dunstan Mlambo noted that there were other avenues the MEC could have taken to deal with Mathebe’s misconduct, for example, through the application of sections 105 and 106 of the Municipal Systems Act.

The judgment stated that Maile missed the opportunity to intervene when one of the officials in his office alerted him to the chaos that had erupted at the council meeting on January 16.

The official was said to have advised the MEC to look into the issue by engaging with the speaker about the legal counsel she received regarding the failed meetings, and by launching an investigation into the functionality of council bodies and reminding councillors of their obligations.

However, the MEC’s action against the speaker was described as a “full-frontal attack”.

“No basis is provided in the answering affidavit about why only the speaker was targeted in the corrective action when there were other and bigger issues at stake,” the judgment read.

The court also questioned why Gauteng Premier David Makhura and Maile had not made an effort to address the constant walkouts by the ANC and EFF councillors, which had led to several failed council sittings.

The ruling said the failure to elect leadership was a direct consequence of the walkouts.

The court said that all councillors were obliged to attend meetings unless there was a lawful reason not to.

“Such conduct was not prioritised or addressed by the MEC, despite its centrality in the council’s conundrum. It is our view that the most effective manner in which this situation was to have been addressed was to invoke the procedures ordained in schedule 1, items 3 and 4 of the Municipal Systems Act.

“This states that they should attend the meetings except for exceptional circumstances as per the act, and sanctions should be imposed for non-attendance. The premier does not, in the answering affidavit, address the failure to act against errant ANC and EFF councillors at all,” read the judgment.

Castro Ngobese, the MEC’s spokesperson, told City Press that they were still studying the judgment and would not comment further on the matter at the moment.

Vuyani Pambo, the EFF’s spokesperson, told City Press that they “had nothing to say”.

“It was the court’s decision, we welcome it. There’s a high possibility that Maile will contest the decision, it’s up to him – and that is what we will say. We will react when there is something to react to,” Pambo said.

Bones Modise, the spokesperson for the ANC in Gauteng, said the party was in the process of going through the judgment.

“We are studying the judgment and we will advise what the way forward is. As soon as we receive a legal brief, we will be informed about what decision we will take,” said Modise.

The announcement to place Tshwane under administration was made in March.

During the official announcement, Makhura said the decision was guided by the Constitution and the law in terms of what needed to be done under the circumstances faced by the Tshwane Municipality.

He argued that Tshwane was facing systemic failures and that service delivery had collapsed.

Get in touch  City Press

+27 11 713 9001 news@citypress.co.za Media Park, 69 Kingsway Road, Auckland Park

Rise above the clutter | Choose your news | City Press in your inbox

City Press is an agenda-setting South African news brand that publishes across platforms. Its flagship print edition is distributed on a Sunday.