The Tshwane metro is pinning all its hopes on the Constitutional Court to save the illegally elected ward committee structure.
During the monthly council meeting, council speaker Morakana Mosuplyoe-Letsholo said that she believes there was a constitutional case to be made out in the matter. This flies in the face of the Gauteng Provincial Court’s ruling that the ward committees were elected without bylaws in place and declared it null and void and the subsequent appeal of this matter to the Supreme Court which rejected the application with its verdict that “the appeal has no reasonable prospects of success’’.
Morakana Mosuplyoe-Letsholo said that the metro will pursue its case. “We will take it to the Constitutional Court. In the meantime the ward committees will remain lawful until otherwise decided by the Constitutional Court,’’ she said.
Les Middelberg of the DA said that there is no possibility that discussion of this matter could be gagged under the pretence that the case is sub judice or suggestions that ward committee members have a legal status. “If a prior court found the ward committees to be unconstitutional, it remains so until founded otherwise, if ever,’’ he said.
He said the opposition party will now make an application to the Supreme Court to force the senior office bearers, mayor Kosientso Ramokgopa, the City Manager Jason Ngobeni, Speaker Morakana Mosuplyoe-Letsholo and the executive director of her office to pay back in terms of section 32 of the Municipal Finance Management Act (the MFMA), the R43 million forked out as a stipendium to committee members since their election in 2012.
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