The Democratic Alliance in Tshwane has decided that it can not support the currently scheduled Ward committee elections. We are extremely disappointed that we have had to come to this decision as we feel that the election and proper functioning of these committees are vital to the functioning of an efficient city and play a vital role in bringing government closer to the people.
Despite attempts to get the office of the Mayor, City Manager and The Speakers office to recognise the invalidity of the scheduled elections on account of the by-law passed by council not yet being valid due to lack of promulgation, we have to date had no success. In addition to our notice of the invalidity for the ward committee by-law sent to the administration of the City, we have also addressed a letter to the Public Protector and the MEC for local government. These attempts to have the deficiency in the promulgation of the by-law rectified have failed due to no corrective action being taken. After all these avenues have been pursued unsuccessfully and after what appears to be the termination of the role of the Municipal Electoral Officer and presiding officers yesterday, we have come to the conclusion that it is in the Public interest that these invalid elections be stopped and that no legitimacy can be given to them. We and the public can under these circumstances not recognise any results from this bungled process.
The Municipal Structures Act requires a Metropolitan Council in terms of Section 73 (3) of said Act to make rules regulating the procedure to elect members of Ward committees. The Municipal Council on 30 June 2011 passed a resolution adopting a by-law to regulate amongst others the election of Ward committees. The Municipal Systems Act in terms of Section 13 requires that before such a by-law can take effect it must be published promptly in the Provincial Gazette AND in any other practical way in order to bring the contents of the by-law to the attention of the local community. It further expressly states that the by-law can not take effect before such publication. It is now going on 7 months and this requirement for prompt publication is still not done. Mayor Ramokgopa has declared "War on small things" such as broken windows. We laud him for this initiative but beg him to not forget the big things such as making your city rules legal. The current administration is trying to build a 10 Storey building without any foundation. We can not allow our residents to go into this construction site as it is fraught with dangers and problems for the health of our city. However perhaps the Systems Act is not sufficient motive for our ANC administration to act upon. The Constitution of South Africa, Section 162, requires that a "Municipal by-law may be enforced only after it has been published in the official gazette of the relevant province." It states that a provincial official gazette must publish a municipal by-law upon request by the Municipality. The Constitution requires that municipal by-laws must be accessible to the public.
Unfortunately the problem gets worse. Not only have ward elections been called in terms of legislation which does not yet legally exist but the administration has also chosen to not comply fully with the proposed regulations. Various community groups who are required to be given specific notice of these elections have not been given notification other than what they may per chance have come across. We hope however that most body corporates etc. have seen these notices due to an apparent expensive notification process having in theory taken place. We believe that a cheap option of giving notices of these elections, on municipal accounts could have been done. This would have been an effective way of communicating with all account holders and could have supplemented other notification methods. We are informed that almost R7 million has been set aside for Marketing of these invalid Ward elections through other media and yet, many residents are not aware of these scheduled ward committee elections despite this large ineffective process having apparently been undertaken. The total budget for the entire ward elections is alleged to be in the region of R14million and part of those costs are for electoral officers and other officials who were apparently relieved of their duties yesterday. We are especially concerned by these costs as we know what it costs the DA to fight a local government election recently and the amounts are no where close to R14 million. We are convinced that most residents saw our campaign. We will be calling for these costs of invalid ward committee elections to be considered wasteful and fruitless expenditure and call on the recovery of these costs from the officials and politicians responsible.
We have been informed further that the Municipal Electoral Officer called off all ward committee elections until the many problems could be resolved. The Municipal Manager has informed us that he has in effect appointed himself as the Municipal Electoral Officer. Firstly this is not possible as only the IEC can appoint such an officer and even in the not yet promulgated by-law the MEO is defined as someone acting under the auspices of the IEC. This state of affairs has been confirmed to us by two senior sources within the IEC.
The second point to consider here is that the proposed not yet promulgated by-law requires the Municipal Electoral officer to publish with 30 days notice the names and Identity numbers of all electoral officers and to provide them with training. We who represent 40% or more of the residents in this City have never seen any such publication. Furthermore, presiding officers and officials with experience initially identified by the previous MEO were relieved of their duties yesterday. We thus find it impossible to consider how the City wishes to not only hold elections on the basis of incomplete legislation but also following procedures not in accord with Councils own proposed rules developed as required by the Municipal Structures Act.
Our tasks as watchdogs of the administration requires that we must act in order to protect the residents of the city from invalid decisions which can costs the city large amounts in future legal disputes and delays due to challenges to the validity of the ward committees. We are resolved to act in the public interest to consider what ever measures may be necessary in order to prevent this tragedy of maladministration to continue.
Cllr. Brandon Topham
Leader of the DA in the Tshwane Metropolitan Council Caucus
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