ANC adamant on collapsing Council

21 June 2018

Today, the ANC has once again shown its disdain for democratic process within the City by disrupting the business of Council and preventing deliberations on a number of crucial items which are critical to ensuring proper service delivery.

The supposed reason for this latest disruption is the ANC’s desire to table an inadmissible motion for discussion before the Council floor.

Surprisingly, the motion is to have me referred to the City’s Ethics Committee for allegedly undermining Council by not acting to support a seemingly corrupt expropriation transaction, undertaken by the previous ANC government.

The transaction would appear to have been irregularly made, lacking in proper Council oversight and against the best interest of residents.

Indeed, three successive ANC governments had failed to address issues regarding this transaction; a transaction dating back to 2003.

Though the matter is still under investigation, preliminary observations suggest only ANC coffers and ANC aligned cronies would have benefitted from this process.

Indeed, it would seem that the past administration sought to force the City into expropriating property at an inflated cost, whilst deriving little utility for the City and residents from the purchase.

It is alleged that some of the property which was to be acquired cannot be used for development purposes.

The ANC’s motion was brought before the City’s multi-party Programming Committee which found that the motion was inadmissible as no breach of Council’s processes had been committed by the Executive nor myself.

The ANC’s continued conduct within Council today only serves to illustrate the depths to which the ANC will sink in order to preserve their patronage networks – all at the expense of residents who wish to see a properly functioning Council that helps them receive quality services.

The biggest losers here aren’t the Councilors sitting in the chamber, who must suffer the annoyance of delayed proceedings due to the ANC. The biggest losers in this situation are the residents of our city.

It is clear that the ANC hasn’t accepted that residents come first, and not their cheap politicking. 

Issued by Luyanda Mfeka, Director, Mayoral Communications, Office of Executive Mayor, Herman Mashaba, City of Johannesburg, 21 June 2018