DA confident about court application to restore democracy to City of Tshwane

28 May 2020

The Democratic Alliance (DA) is confident that the outcome of its Section 18 (3) Application presented in the North Gauteng High Court today will be favourable.

The DA argued to have the recent judgment declaring the dissolution of the Tshwane Council unlawful, implemented, notwithstanding an appeal against the judgement by the African National Congress (ANC) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).

The DA will not sit idle while the appeal by the ANC and EFF seeks to prolong the unlawful tenure of a deployed team of administrators in Tshwane.

Each day the administrators remain in office undermines the democratic choice that was made by the residents of Tshwane in August 2016 in favour of a DA leadership for the City Council.

The residents of Tshwane must be led by the people they elected rather than those undemocratically imposed on them.

The DA wants the Tshwane Council restored urgently particularly because decisive leadership is needed during these difficult times to help combat the spread of the Covid-19 crisis.

As it stands, councillors are left out in the cold and residents have no access to the City Council.

The administrators have made no effort to facilitate public participation in municipal processes that include the Integrated Development Plan (IDP) and Budget.

They are a law unto themselves and are only accountable to the ANC that deployed them there.

The budget for the 2020/2021 financial year which should have been released at the beginning of April this year was only released mid-May for public comment, after the DA filed legal papers highlighting the administrators failure in their legislative duties.

There is also no strategy in place on how the current unlawful administrators will engage rural communities on the budget, which could result in the lowest levels of public participation in the city’s history.

The city is facing record levels of under-collection, which is placing its financial stability at risk. With no strategy in place to correct this, the administrators are pushing the capital off a fiscal cliff.

With no oversight committees and councillors there is no method of accountability and transparency over the decisions that are taking place in the city.

These are just some of the many reasons why we are urging the court to grant the DA this Section 18(3) Application to remove these unlawful administrators and return democracy to the City of Tshwane.

The ANC has desperately tried to convince the court that there is no pressing reason for the immediate implementation of the judgement.

Their strategy is obvious for all to see.

They are hoping to delay the implementation of the judgement for as long as possible while they cling to power in the city.

The DA has slowly eroded the ANC's influence in Tshwane since 2016 and they are terrified they will never return to govern the city.

Hence their only hope is to unlawfully dissolve the city’s council and deploy illegal administrators who they can control to govern it.

Issued by Randall Williams,DA Tshwane Mayoral Candidate, 28 May 2020