Lisa Isaacs
THE ANC, supported by fellow opposition parties in the City of Cape Town, is appealing to Co-operative Governance Minister Pravin Gordhan to intervene on their exclusion from council discussions at the first full council sitting this week.
ANC councillors were booted from the meeting when Speaker Dirk Smit indicated for a vote on the contentious eviction of Plumstead residents to make way for a MyCiTi bus route. ANC members accused him of not giving them a fair chance to debate the issue. Some ANC councillors later threw punches at Metro Police.
Yesterday, at a joint press conference held by the ANC, Cope, PAC, Al Jama-ah, and the National Party of South Africa, the parties said the DA-run city excluded those opposed to the “advancement of apartheid practices”.
“The parties are united in their concern about the procedures applied by the city administration. The process of stopping the meeting and relocating thereof to another venue that excluded other parties, was in violation of the Municipal Systems Act.
“That fact reduces the decisions that were taken in the meeting, and accordingly cannot be prevented,” said ANC chief whip Xolani Sotashe.
Keith Gottschalk, head of UWC’s political studies department, said the official opposition in the city had become more confrontational. He added that an “arrogance” – referring to the Wynberg issue – by the majority-ruling DA councillors played a role in the chaos which ensued.
Political science professor at Stellenbosch University, Amanda Gouws, said: “This is not acceptable. We see now on a local government level what has happened at the National Assembly – ill discipline, interrupting, low levels of debate and a very high level of intolerance.”
She said councillors were “not serving the people who voted for them”.
Safety and security mayco member JP Smith had footage of the ANC’s scuffle with Metro Police. “Numerous officers were injured. They were hit, kicked, verbally assaulted, had their watches and glasses ripped off.”
Gordhan’s spokesman referred the Cape Times to a department spokesman. There was no response to requests for comment at the time of going to press.