Ekurhuleni councillors have successfully petitioned the city’s speaker to reconvene the much-awaited council meeting to sit next week Tuesday.
A total of 224 councillors wanted the meeting to be reconvened whilst 194 were against.
ActionSA caucus leader in the municipality, Siyanda Makhubo welcomed the decision by the speaker to reconvene, whilst accusing her of being untrustworthy.
“Cllr Tshivhenga has from the very beginning of her tenure, been unable to separate herself from her political party, the EFF, and chair council in an unbiased manner.
“ActionSA insists that the City’s finances need to be stabilised, the institutional review rapidly implemented, and quality services delivered to our residents as soon as possible. This cannot take place until both the Economic Freedom Fighter’s puppet Mayor Ngodwana, and their delinquent Speaker are removed from their positions,” Makhubo said.
He also bemoaned the fact that the Auditor General’s report of the City’s finances had still not been tabled, in violation of the Municipal Finance Management Act deadline of January 31.
This he claimed, “puts the City closer to being placed on junk status by the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.”
Makhubo added that the EFF’s inability to separate party from municipal governance, represented “a very real threat to the democratic norms and principles” of local government.
“ActionSA looks forward to political change that will begin fixing the mess the unholy matrimony that this coalition (EFF/ANC) has created in Ekurhuleni”.
EFF Provincial Chairperson and the city’s finance MMC, Nkululeko Dunga, said ActionSA was instrumental in the collapse of the City of Tshwane and should therefor be the last to speak of collapsing municipalities.
Dunga said when the EFF took over from the Democratic Alliance (DA) it made sure that service delivery was restored to the majority black constituency which the DA led government had neglected for the longest time.
“Tshwane is literally collapsing and ActionSA is part of that, so until such time that the party does some introspection on itself we will not entertain them. If they had an ounce of interest in bettering the lives of the people they should have first done that in the city of Tshwane,” he added.
On the reconvened motion, Dunga said the EFF was a democratic organisation which would always follow the democratic processes.
“When the Motion is called we will partake, remember the speaker is the member of the EFF, so if we did not agree with it we wouldn’t have allowed it to be reconvened.”
He added that they were going into the council meeting with the firm belief that the “People’s government” had done a lot in their tenure.
Dunga also revealed that the city now had R900 million in cash in hand.
Last week, ANC regional co-ordinator, Jongizizwe Dlabathi, raised serious concerns about the state of the city’s finances.
Dlabathi said as the ANC was monitoring the developments within Ekurhuleni and assessing the municipality’s performance.
This comes after a brawl broke out at an Ekurhuleni council meeting between ANC and EFF councillors who got into a fistfight, with water bottles and papers being thrown at each other last Thursday.
The fracas happened while a motion for a vote of no confidence against Ekurhuleni mayor Sivuyile Ngodwana was being tabled.
During a briefing in Germiston earlier in the week, Dlabathi said the ANC was prepared for any eventuality, but would not be part of a collaborative arrangement if it was not helpful in taking forward the programme of a better life for all.
“It is not about the positions, nor the perks of governance, but our commitment to building better communities,” he said.
The Council met ten days ago to vote on a motion of no confidence against Ngodwana.
The ANC proposed an amendment to the motion, that the party with the most seats put forward a mayoral candidate.
Saturday Star