DA turns to court over city manager’s suspension and ‘rigged votes’

The DA filed an urgent application in the High Court in Pretoria yesterday to have the Tshwane special council meeting, in which city manager Johann Mettler was suspended, set aside and give effect to the actual votes of the councillors.

DA’s Tshwane mayoral candidate Cilliers Brink said 95 councillors present voted against the suspension, while 92 voted in favour of the suspension before council speaker Mncedi Ndzwanana deducted 13 votes.

“The council meeting was called at short notice and did not specify any business that would be conducted. When it started at 10am, councillors still had no agenda or reports. Only by 3.30pm did council have the opportunity to sit down and discuss the business,” Brink said.

“By that time, nine DA councillors and one Freedom Front Plus councillor, who initially put in leave, were ready to participate in the meeting. At no point did the speaker conduct a roll call and simply accepted a proposal that the votes be deducted.

“The speaker didn’t deduct nine votes; he deducted 13. This entire council meeting was mismanaged and the votes were tampered with,” he added.

Call for a fresh council meeting

Brink said, alternatively, the DA would like the court to order a new meeting and to instruct the speaker not to rig the votes.

“They are going after Mettler because he is putting his foot down against irregular expenditure and rigged tenders,” he said.

“We were particularly concerned about one tender Mettler had referred back to the committee, which was a 50-year-old lease on the Tshwane showgrounds. But there are other reasons why the ANC-EFF coalition wants Mettler out of office.”

Brink said ActionSA national chair Michael Beaumont’s accusations were untrue and added that he didn’t live in Tshwane or attend the meeting.

ActionSA rejects DA claims

Beaumont had said Brink could spin to his heart’s content, but the facts of the matter were the DA was 20 votes short of their full complement of councillors and had submitted 13 leaves of absence on the day, declaring councillors unavailable to attend.

“As much as Brink would like to make the matter about everything else, the reality is had his councillors not put in leave, Mettler would still be the city manager and Gareth Mnisi would not be back at work,” said Beaumont.

Republican Conference of Tshwane councillor Lex Middelberg said he submitted serious allegations against Mnisi for investigation in council two weeks before the Madlanga commission, which were dismissed.

Middelberg said the opposite happened with Mettler.

“The coalition turned into a lynch mob; they rejected my proposal to appoint an independent investigator in favour of an appointment they could control to investigate. As they excluded the most serious charges against Mnisi involving Mettler, there is not a strong case against him,” he said.

Spokesperson for council speaker Mzwandile Khathi said Ndzwanana would not comment at this point as the matter was sub judice.