Tshwane council meeting postponed due to lack of quorum

A Tshwane council meeting to elect a new speaker collapsed on Monday  after a failure to reach a quorum.

DA chief whip Christo van den Heever announced the absence of 108 councillors from the DA and its multiparty coalition partners ActionSA, FF Plus, ACDP and IFP, rendering their apologies submitted to his office.

EFF caucus leader Obakeng Ramabodu accused the DA and its partners of taking “group leave” to deliberately collapse council and ensure it did not meet quorum and did not proceed.

“They know they will lose on voting for the election of the speaker. They are cowards. It is an abuse of power,” he said. 

Ramabodu criticised the DA for what he said is “hypocrisy to abscond meetings whereas they had taken the EFF to court over their absence in previous council meetings”. This was followed by a court order that instructed councillors to return to council.

“The chief whip himself was in council to present the leave of absence. During Solly Msimanga’s mayorship, they used the courts to remind us of our responsibility to attend council meetings without failure. They are violating that same court order,” said Ramabodu.

The EFF leader alleged the reason behind the “synced group leave” was to collapse council and accommodate the polygraph testing announced by ActionSA last week, said to be taking place on Monday morning in Midrand.

The multiparty coalition announced it would use lie detector tests to sniff out the eight councillors who defied their coalition caucus decision to back DA caucus leader Cilliers Brink and instead voted for Murunwa Makwarela for the city’s top job.

However, Brink denied claims they are deliberately collapsing council, saying they had communicated “they did not wish to participate in the meeting”.

“We did not want the meeting to proceed. It was a political decision. We also had serious reservations about the acting speaker of council being sidelined. We have no intention of ‘collapsing’ anything.”

He said the decision was taken in individual party caucuses and apologies were entered by all DA, ActionSA, FF Plus, ACDP and IFP councillors, as required by law.

“When the meeting was planned last week the whips of the multiparty coalition made it clear to the city manager and the office of the speaker that we are not available for the meeting, so nobody should’ve been surprised the meeting didn’t quorate.

“In any event, you can’t collapse an inquorate meeting. We won’t be rushed into holding a council meeting on the terms of the ANC and the EFF.”

Brink said they believed it was the competency of the acting speaker, the IFP’s Ziyanda Zwane, to call a council meeting but he has not been permitted to do so by city officials.

“He is no doubt acting on the instructions of the ANC-EFF coalition. We will speak to the city manager to resolve the issue as soon as possible, suitable to the majority of council,” said the DA caucus leader.

Ramabodu said his party would call on council to take the DA and its multiparty coalition partners to court over their decision to play truant in council.

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