Buli’s Thoughts Unpacked

As usual, sparks flew at last week’s monthly council meeting when ANC councillor, Doctor Xhakaza, the MMC for Water and Energy, referred to black members of the DA as “fronts”.

The speaker, Patricia Kumalo, did not see anything out of order with what Clr Xhakaza said and cited that it was a political debate and that the DA should basically stop throwing tantrums and man-up.

That is when we saw DA members walk out of the meeting, like they did at the SONA earlier this year in parliament.

The meeting was heated from the start, when an altercation between councillor for the IRASA, Izak Berg and ANC councillor Robert Mashego, spiralled out of control. During the altercation, Clr Berg offended the Speaker when he pointed angrily at her and the Speaker would have none of that.

In case you are wondering what council meetings are about, here’s a brief explanation. Council meetings are structured to process matters of importance in the communities. Issues that require the attention of council are generally referred to an appropriate committee for review, discussion and consideration. The decisions of a committee are then forwarded to council for approval. The agendas include a summary of the issue to be discussed. At the beginning of this meeting, the councillors, and the community, the media and all stakeholders, are addressed by the mayor. This address normally includes issues that might have arisen over the past month, as well as items included in the council agenda that will be discussed or debated after the speech.

So, if those who are tasked to represent the community decide to walk out of these meetings for silly reasons like the ones the DA stated in a statement released after the meeting; how are they going to debate the issues and raise the community’s concerns?

As much as I believe that they had valid reasons to walk out of the SONA, I do however think that some of their walk-outs are just downright childish. The DA members cannot choose to walk out every time the ruling party or some opposition says something they don’t like. It is not as though the DA doesn’t through the same punches. When they walked out of that council meeting last week, they failed to represent their voters because whatever they had prepared for that meeting was never presented. After they walked out, the ruling party was basically just having a party by themselves because the official opposition was outside smoking.

By choosing to walk out of that council meeting, DA voters were let down by their own councillors, whatever motions they would have rejected might have gone uncontested since their leaders were not there to object to them.

DA leaders need to realise that when they choose to leave the chambers that does not mean the end of the meeting. For them to go on social networks afterwards to complain about not being able to present their reports was just them looking for attention.

When you go to these meetings, you are going to have to grow up and be able to roll with the punches, otherwise people might think you are just not capable of representing them and fighting for their rights as you always claim to be.