Note to editors: A voice note from Cllr Cilliers Brink pertaining to this statement can be found here in English and here in Afrikaans.
The DA in Tshwane will not stop fighting for stable, accountable government in Tshwane, even as the Gauteng ANC-EFF coalition tries everything in their power to make the City ungovernable with residents as collateral. We will also resist any effort by the ANC premier of Gauteng Panyaza Lesufi to create conditions for the City to be placed under administration.
Attorneys for the DA and our coalition partners have written to the ANC-EFF puppet Speaker of Tshwane to demand that he resume the Council meeting to elect an Executive Mayor to serve and reassure the residents of the City.
Yesterday the Speaker adjourned this meeting on the pretext of a dispute within COPE over who their sole councillor must be. The issue of who is to fill COPE’s vacancy is, howver, simple: the Speaker can merely consult the IEC to determine who the next person is on the list.
The real reason the Speaker obstructed the progress of the meeting was that the ANC-EFF coalition does not have the numbers to elect an Executive Mayor.
Previously the ANC-EFF coalition relied on the support of individual picked-off councillors from other parties to secretly vote against their parties and their electoral mandate. But each of the parties in the Multi-Party Coalition have now taken steps to clean house and ensure the underhanded tactics previously used cannot again succeed. Three ActionSA councillors have been fired. The police is also investigating an allegation by another ActionSA councillor that he was offered a R2 million bribe to secretly vote for the ANC-EFF coalition.
Premier Panyaza Lesufi has been instrumental in forging the Gauteng ANC-EFF coalition and, adding deed to his word, causing the current chaos in Tshwane. He personally persuaded the now-disgraced COPE councillor Murunwa Makwarela to become the ANC-EFF puppet mayoral candidate. Makwarela was later discovered to be an unrehabilitated insolvent.
It is clear that Lesufi’s game plan for the political benefit of the ANC-EFF coalition is to cause chaos in Tshwane and manufacture conditions for the City to be placed under ‘administration’ by his provincial executive committee. Residents will not forget that the last time the ANC Gauteng government ‘intervened’ in Tshwane, it caused financial devastation and the breakdown of financial controls.
When the ANC-EFF last sought to capture Tshwane, the DA obtained a Constitutional Court order against the Gauteng government. We will use this precedent to defend Tshwane against Lesufi’s prying hands.