Nelson Mandela Bay council dramas paralyse city
The 11th Nelson Mandela Bay council meeting since March collapsed on Thursday after opposition parties walked out of the council chamber.
The ANC, EFF, UDM, AIC and United Front had planned to boot out mayor Athol Trollip and the rest of the coalition government through no-confidence motions, but backed out hours after the Patriotic Alliance (PA) pulled its support, which left them a seat short of the number they needed to succeed.
Their walkout has caused a further delay in processing crucial municipal matters which have been on the council agenda since March.
It has led to a massive backlog of rezoning applications and delays in forging ahead with a housing project in Parsonsvlei, and it has stalled the city’s attempts to appoint a chief financial officer and executive director of public health.
The council also has only until the end of August to write off R8bn in irregular expenditure – or face yet another qualified audit from the auditorgeneral.
City manager Johann Mettler said the constant council adjournments – due to walkouts and meetings descending into screaming matches and chaos – have had a serious impact on the administration.
“There are many land disposal and rezoning applications and other land applications that we must process through council,” he said.
“We have a very serious backlog in terms of those applications.“This means that many developers cannot proceed with the development of land, and many churches cannot make use of properties that have been made available to them to establish and build their churches.
“The lives of people are being negatively affected.”
The municipal public accounts committee (Mpac) agreed in April to write off R8bn in irregular expenditure dating back to 2002. “From a financial management perspective, we need to get that through council before the end of August when we have to finalise our financial statements and hand that to the AG,” Mettler said.
“If the council does not sit before the end of August, we will again be in the unenviable position of having the most irregular expenditure on our books in the country.
“We have done real work to identify all of these and brought that to Mpac, just for it not to be considered by the council. That in itself is a tragedy.”
“The AG has also listed the non-appointment of the CFO as a major governance issue.
“If we can still not this year manage to appoint a CFO it really says a lot to the public in terms of how we manage our finances.”
Over the last six months, the council has only managed to sit through two meetings – to approve the budget and long-service bonuses – and those, too, were after a couple of failed attempts.
On Thursday, the opposition parties walked out of the scheduled council meeting after butting heads with speaker Jonathan Lawack over the late delivery of council agendas.
Opposition councillors, who had been hounding Lawack for a special council sitting to debate the no-confidence motions against Trollip, Lawack and chief whip Werner Senekal, said participating in Thursday’s sitting would have been “illegal”.
They said the agendas had not been delivered within the prescribed five working days because, with last week’s public holiday, it meant they only had four working days to peruse them.
After 30 minutes of arguing with Lawack – who said there had been problems with the printers – the opposition eventually walked out, leaving the 60 coalition councillors of the DA, COPE, ACDP and PA in the chamber.
To hold a meeting, there needs to be 61 councillors present to constitute a quorum.
The move followed the decision by the PA on Wednesday to back down from its earlier statement that it would support the removal of Trollip.
Its fraught relationship with the EFF – which labelled the PA thugs and “unrepentant fraudsters” – was ultimately the cause for its backing out at the 11th hour.Trollip said the walkout was a clearly orchestrated move to collapse the meeting.
“This is now the umpteenth time,” he said.
“I can’t even remember how many times we have been here and the so-called motion has not materialised.
“It is a sad day that the opposition parties have allowed the business of this council to be stalled since March.”
PA councillor Marlon Daniels apologised to residents for the delays in the council decision-making.
“Had the Patriotic Alliance not revisited its decision to engage with the opposition parties, it would not have panned out like this,” he said.
“If we had given our support to the opposition parties, they would have remained in council – it’s a decision that we have taken, which was the right decision, that has led to them walking out when they realised that they did not have the numbers.”
Daniels said he was sorry and would not be giving his support to “such opposition parties” in the future.
COPE councillor Siyasanga Sijadu said: “Today was yet again an example of how pathetic and immature some of the parties in our council are.”
The opposition parties have vowed to pursue their quest to oust the coalition government within seven days.
United Front councillor Mkhuseli Mtsila said: “This meeting would have been lawful had it taken place tomorrow [Friday].
“The DA are too quick to run to courts when things don’t go their way.”
The AIC’s Thsonono Buyeye agreed, saying it believed the DA would have challenged the meeting’s outcome had they forged ahead and successfully removed Trollip, Lawack and Senekal.
EFF regional chair Ngawethu Madaka said it would not retreat from its motion, while ANC regional secretary Themba Xathula said council would be reconvened through proper processes.
Asked if the UDM would have continued with Thursday’s council meeting if it had Daniels’ vote to oust Trollip, UDM councillor Mongameli Bobani said the opposition was “not hungry for Marlon Daniels’ vote”.
“When we remove them, we don’t want them to come back and say the motions were illegal because the council meeting was illegal.”
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