Note to Editors: Please find English and Afrikaans soundbites by Ald Cilliers Brink here and here
The extent to which Tshwane’s ANC coalition is wasting taxpayers’ money is revealed by the recent judgment of the Gauteng High Court setting aside the so-called city cleansing levy.
The DA will write to Tshwane’s City Manager to investigate the City’s handling of the case, and whether there are grounds to hold MMC, EFF council leader Obakeng Ramabodu or any other politician personally liable for wasted legal costs.
AfriForum took the levy on judicial review, as well as setting aside the levy, the judge was scathing about the City’s conduct of the case.
Not only did the court point to the failure of the metro to produce policy documents on which its defence of the levy was based. The court also criticised the overreach of the metro in employing three counsel to argue the case as well as the production of hundreds of pages of essentially irrelevant documents.
The charge for every page, and every billable hour, is for the account of the people of Tshwane. The irony is that this money is spent in justification of a city cleaning levy which the city was unable to justify.
In paragraph 174, the judge even issued a warning to the Metro’s legal representatives of the professional ethical implications of putting up an unmeritorious defence.
The following is an index of some of the judge’s criticism of the Metro’s conduct of the case:
- Tshwane misleading the court by having denied the fact that private waste providers pay access fees to use the metro’s landfill sites (Paragraph 156).
- Tshwane’s introduction of a new rationale, not initially placed before the court, in defence of the city cleansing levy (Paragraph 157-158).
- Paragraph 160: Tshwane’s failure to supplement its papers in answer to evidence produced by AfriForum, the applicant in the case.
- Paragraph 170: Tshwane’s conduct in obfuscating the issue before the court, including its own non-compliance with legislation and the submission of irrelevant documents.
- Paragraph 172-175: Disapproval at Tshwane’s briefing three counsel, and the unavailability of Tshwane’s lead counsel for the hearing of the case.
When the levy was being debated in Tshwane council, the DA rejected the idea of such a levy as a way of filling the City’s coffers without offering residents an improved service.
The same budget which raised the levy did not increase the allocation for city cleansing. In other words, the ANC coalition didn’t plan to spend the new money on city cleansing.
Instead of resigning, the responsible MMC, EFF council leader Obakeng Ramabodu has announced that the City would appeal the High Court ruling. If the City’s legal team could not even produce documents on which they relied to defend the levy in court, it is unclear how they would sustain an appeal.