Pretoria - Lobby group AfriForum has joined forces with the Mafube Business Forum to gun for President Cyril Ramaphosa and some Cabinet ministers in a legal bid to force them to intervene in the beleaguered Mafube Local Municipality in the Free State.
At the centre of the case, which was heard at the Bloemfontein High Court yesterday, were complaints that the municipality and provincial and national government had failed in their constitutional obligations to provide sustainable services to residents.
The applicants’ move was initiated after they announced this week that the buck must stop with Ramaphosa in the event the state continued to fail in delivering services. Among the respondents cited in court papers were Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana, Human Settlements Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi, and Premier Sisi Ntombela.
Parties sought for the municipal council to be dissolved and be put under administration by the national government. AfriForum’s relations officer, Jacques Jansen van Vuuren yesterday told the Pretoria News that residents wanted the national government to run the municipality because “the province has taken over the administration since 2017, but they are simply not capable”.
“This will be the first case whereby the national government will be compelled by the court to take over the administration at the municipality, instead of the province,” he said.
“The people on the ground are just not getting services.” According to him, the forum’s legal team tried to reach out to Dlamini Zuma’s office, but to no avail.
AfriForum's manager of local government affairs, Morné Mostert, said: “Although local governments are autonomous, there is still a supervision authority within the Constitution for the provincial government to ensure that these services are rendered.
“In this case, the provincial government was informed of the municipality’s problems, but it failed to intervene. This is why this obligation to ensure services lies with the national government. The Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, and eventually the president, must intervene if the state does not comply with constitutional criteria.”
Van Vuuren said they took up the matter on behalf of the residents, who continued to bear the brunt of poor services in places such Frankfort, Tweeling, Villiers and Cornelia. Refuse removal, he said, had not taken place for more than two years.
According to court papers, the case was precipitated by the fact that the municipality and other respondents “have been in serious, prolonged, and persistent breach of their most basic constitutional statutory and regulatory obligations”. The municipality's telephones, telefax numbers and websites were not operating, which also created a lack of accountability to residents.
Attempts by the Pretoria News to get comment from the municipality proved fruitless as its phone was not working. At the time of publication the court proceedings were still under way, and it was believed judgment would be reserved.
Pretoria News