Durban - THE DA exited the online 2020/21 eThekwini Municipality budget meeting recently after the repeated muting of its leader when she tried to deliver her party’s response to the budget.
The Daily News has since established it was not only the DA that experienced hiccups during the meeting, but the mayor and Speaker, too.
Nicole Graham said the DA was seeking legal advice.
“After we sat politely and listened to mayor Mxolisi Kaunda speak for almost two hours, I was repeatedly muted by someone, nine times in four minutes, when I tried to deliver the DA’s response. This did not happen to either the mayor or the deputy mayor, who spoke before me. Speaker Weziwe Thusi refused to address the situation and the Facebook live stream was cut two minutes into my address when I began questioning what was going on,” Graham said.
“I demanded that the meeting be made public and the muting issue be addressed, but the Speaker simply carried on, with IFP councillor Mdu Nkosi happy to deliver his address,” Graham added.
Nkosi said the party did not take kindly to being dragged into the DA’s “unhappiness” in what transpired during the meeting. “I have a mandate from my party to represent it, so when the Speaker gives me an opportunity to speak, then I should take that opportunity and represent my party.
“If I fail to do that then party members will have to report me to our caucus. When that happens then action will be taken against me,” Nkosi said.
Speaking on behalf of the Speaker and the mayor, mayoral spokesperson Mluleki Mntungwa said the DA was being “mischievous”.
“We dismiss the DA’s allegations. To us, it appears to have been a technical glitch that not only the DA experienced. That they (DA) decided to pull out from the meeting is so unfortunate. I can tell you that even the mayor had some instances where he experienced some breakdown in the system. He would get muted and then be online again,” Mntungwa said.