Pretoria - Civil rights group AfriForum has launched a legal bid to challenge the powers of the City of Tshwane head administrator Mpho Nawa to pass the 2020/21 budget, which took effect on July 1.
Head of local government at AfriForum, Morne Mostert, said the matter was due to be heard in the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria on September 29.
Mostert said the group would ask the court to declare invalid the decision by Nawa to approve the final budget and that a temporary budget should rather be approved.
In addition, AfriForum wants the court to order a new process to be started to allow residents to take part in “certain decisions that were just pushed through with the budget that the administrator approved”.
Mostert said Nawa had acted in contravention of Section 1 of the Municipal Financial Management Act which defined an approved budget as “a budget that is either approved by council or provincial executive in terms of the intervention of Section 139 of the Constitution”.
He said if the Tshwane municipality had failed to approve a budget before July 1 of the financial year, the provincial executive must ensure that an interim budget was approved. Mostert said Nawa had, in court papers, argued that he acted within his rights.
The coalition government of the Democratic Alliance-Economic Freedom Fighters (DA-EFF) collapsed last year and the former mayor Stevens Mokgalapa resigned under a cloud in February.
The ANC and EFF councillors staged walkouts of meetings and so there was no quorum for the council to sit. The city was placed under administration by the province, supported by the National Council of Provinces and Cogta Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma.
The DA took the matter to court, which overturned the decision to dissolve the council in April, but the ANC was taking the matter on appeal. In the interim, the country went into national lockdown so Nawa has remained on with the legal and political battle due to resume after lockdown.