Two DA ward councillors in Nelson Mandela Bay turned against their party, siding with the new coalition government on Friday.
The councillors, Trevor Louw and Neville Higgins – councillors of Ward 35 and 37, respectively – were the only councillors of the DA who turned up.
The rest of the DA and its coalition partners COPE, ACDP and Patriotic Alliance stayed away. The ANC, AIC, UDM and the United Front needed a 61-member majority to continue with council business.
With Louw and Higgins present the parties had 62 councillors. It later emerged that a resignation letter, allegedly written by Louw to the DA, had been handed over by the secretariat to city manager Johann Mettler before the meeting started.
But Louw claimed DA members had grabbed his bag and forcefully took the resignation letter from him. He did not deny writing the letter. Louw said: "This letter was forcefully taken from me by DA members outside .
I had no intentions of submitting it but my bag was taken,” Louw said. A Herald reporter saw DA councilllor Rano Kayser standing outside the chamber door to hand over Louw's resignation letter.
Kayser said he was going to give the letter to the municipal manager. "I've got the letter right here. He resigned from the DA and is not a councilllor anymore".
But speaker Buyelwa Mafaya refused to acknowledge the letter, saying Louw had not handed over the letter himself. She also ordered that the allegations that the letter was forcefully taken from him be investigated.
She declared the resignation letter null and void. Meanwhile, the councillors agreed to that former mayor Athol Trollip undergo a disciplinary process for “leaking” a confidential municipal report to DA leader Mmusi Maimane.
Trollip is accused of transgressing the council rules by handing over draft forensic reports to Maimane last year at the height of the tense standoff between Trollip and his then deputy, Mongameli Bobani, of the UDM.
The reports, compiled by auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), allegedly contain damning evidence of impropriety by Bobani while he was at the helm of the public health department.
The reports, however, have yet to be made public.
Trollip said previously he did not regard his actions as leaking.
“A leak implies secrecy/concealed disclosure.
“I certainly did not leak the report to Mr Maimane or the leaders of our coalition partners.
“I report to my party leadership and in a coalition to the coalition partners. When I raised concerns about the issues under councillor Bobani’s stewardship, it was Bantu Holomisa who requested the evidence/ report.”
The council meeting is still underway.