The City of Ekurhuleni has been instructed to convene a council sitting before Friday.
This as the municipality failed to schedule a session last week in which it was expected that a new city mayor would be elected following the removal of African Independent Congress (AIC) councillor Sivuyile Ngodwana from office.
Ngodwana was voted out of the mayoral position in a council meeting that was held last week after a motion of no confidence was filed by ActionSA.
Gauteng Cooperative Governance MEC Mzi Khumalo said what was happening in Ekurhuleni was a clear indication that the country was not ready to be governed by coalition government.
“My assertion is that I don’t think we are ready for coalition government, this is exactly the consequence of coalition governments. While respecting the voters, because what we have is what the voters have given us,” Khumalo added on Tuesday.
He said the situation in the municipality has given rise to party political interest rather than on people implementing what was contained in the law and what was contained within the system.
“For instance you would know not so long ago, when the municipality was unable to complete process with the Auditor-General (AG), the department that was blamed was the finance which was headed by the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), and if it was also headed by the African National Congress (ANC), it was also going to be blamed instead of the collective mayoral committee taking responsibility as envisage by the law.”
Khumalo said the council speaker Nthabiseng Tshivhenga informed his office that the reason the last week’s meeting was cancelled was due to matters that were beyond her control.
However, according to Khumalo, Tshivenga did not disclose as to what were those reason, adding that he hoped that the speaker would inform them of those reasons on their schedule meeting.
“We are still interested in hearing specifics around that and we hope through engagement we can be able to do that. As part of us exercising our responsibility as the provincial government, we wrote to the speaker to say not withstanding what your letter is, please take into the account what the law says and on those basis we have, I issue a directive that the sitting must be held by the 12,” the MEC said.
Tshivenga has issued a notice of an extraordinary council meeting to be held on Wednesday.
The Star