EFF welcome dissolution of Tshwane council, coming elections
The EFF's folded-arms approach appears to have resulted in one of their prefered outcomes for Tshwane.
EFF leader Julius Malema speaks at Sankopano Alexandra stadium in Johannesburg, 1 May 2019, at a May Day Rally. Picture: Nigel Sibanda
If that municipality collapses, let it collapse. Let the people of Tshwane go back to elections and decide what they want, EFF leader Julius Malema told the media while visiting the party’s stand at the Rand Easter Show in April last year.
The EFF has now welcomed the dissolution of the Tshwane Municipality, which was announced by Premier David Makhura on Thursday morning.
Gauteng Cogta MEC Lebogang Maile alongside Makhura held a media briefing on Thursday to announce that the provincial council would dissolve the metro’s council and place it under administration.
In a statement, the EFF said Tshwane residents now had the opportunity to constitute a functional municipality after months of poor service delivery.
“Service delivery has been poor in Tshwane. Residents are not receiving water, refuse is not being collected and unemployment has reached levels that cannot be tolerated.
“We welcome the opportunity to go to elections and give our people the democratic right to elect a leadership with a fresh mandate to lead Tshwane towards functionality. As the EFF we are ready to go into a fresh round of elections and will organise our membership and ground forces towards a decisive victory.”
Tshwane metro currently has no city manager, a mayoral council or mayor, amid a plethora of collapsed councils.
The EFF believe that the “conduct and arrogance of those who behaved as if they won the metro” was the reason for the dissolution.
“The inability to work with a collective by those charged with leading the metro is why services were not being delivered and why this council has been dissolved.”
Malema has stressed that the EFF’s relationship with the DA was stretched too thin and the party would no longer vote with or for the DA.
“The voter always puts us in a compromised position. Whatever choice you make, you are compromised.
“I don’t think it will work. We are giving the DA power in Tshwane and Johannesburg. They are biting the hand that is feeding them and expect that hand to continue feeding them. It’s unscientific; it won’t work,” said Malema in his address to the media at the Rand Show.
Things were brought to a standstill last week when the council failed to appoint a new mayor following Stevens Mokgalapa’s last day in office, placing it at risk of dissolution because it failed to pass its adjustment budgets by the end of February 2020.
Mokgalapa resigned after his own party gave him an ultimatum. He had been on suspension after an audio clip was leaked of him engaging in an apparent intimate act with former roads and transport MMC Sheila Senkubuge.
He was appointed in 2019 ahead of the national polls in a bid, by the DA, to stabilise the municipality following the resignation of Solly Msimanga.
(Compiled by Gopolang Moloko, background reporting: News24 Wire)
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