Durban – eThekwini Speaker Logie Naidoo survived a vote of no confidence at a full council meeting on Thursday after the DA accused him of lacking “independence, integrity and impartiality”.
DA councillor Sharon Hoosen, and the party’s caucus leader, Zwakele Mncwango, invoked Section 40 of the Municipal Structures Act to remove Naidoo, charging that he had failed to bring order at council meetings and sided with the ANC half of the floor.
Naidoo had, at the start of the council proceedings, said he planned to charge DA councillors who disrupted the last full council meeting by allegedly pounding on tables, shouting and refusing to allow other councillors to speak.
The DA walked out of that meeting on October 1 saying they were frustrated by Naidoo’s rulings against them and alleged he turned off their microphones when they wanted to speak or raise points of order.
After raising the motion of no confidence on Thursday, the DA asked if the vote could be done via a secret ballot in the hope that some ANC councillors would have sided with them. But the municipality’s legal adviser shot the request down, saying that the rules only allowed for a show of hands.
Naidoo recused himself and ANC councillor Fawzia Peer was nominated to chair the no-confidence motion.
Tabling the motion, Hoosen said that while Naidoo tried to do the right thing, his party, the ANC, did not allow him to.
“But we want you to know that your partial actions and fear of standing up for the right thing erodes the very core of this institution, and impacts on the integrity and impartiality of the entire council.
“This is why your rulings are often in favour of your party, and this is why council meetings are often thrown into chaos,” she said.
Mncwango said that since Naidoo took over as Speaker in 2011, democracy had gradually been undermined in the city.
“The voice of opposition councillors has been eroded to make way for a majoritarian ANC, more concerned with self-congratulation and arrogance than with ensuring a fair council.
“A different set of rules has begun to apply, depending on whether or not councillors belong to the same party as the Speaker,” he said.
“Drowning out minority voices with the sheer power of numbers is not democracy,” he said.”
However, the ANC, supported by the MF, rejected the DA’s motion, calling it “political grandstanding”.
“The ANC disagrees with this notice of motion,” ANC councillor Stanley Xulu said.
MF councillor Patrick Pillay said the motion was nothing but “media grandstanding” by a party that wanted to be portrayed as victims.
A vote put to the floor saw the six IFP members vote alongside the 40 DA members.
However, they lost the vote to the ANC’s majority of 91 votes, supported by four votes from the MF, one from the ACDP, one Truly Alliance and one Independent vote. The eight members of the NFP abstained.
Afterwards, after being welcomed back into the House to chants of “Logie, Logie, Logie”, Naidoo said he was pleased to have been backed by his party.
He said the motion was “sour grapes” from the DA councillors after he had instituted disciplinary proceedings against them.