DA halts process to appoint Tshwane City Manager

22 June 2020

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has launched an urgent application on Friday with the North Gauteng High Court to immediately stop the process of appointing an unlawful ANC-City Manager in Tshwane.

The DA’s legal counsel has written to the unlawfully deployed ANC Head Administrator, Mpho Nawa, after receiving two recent judgments in the party’s favour, that they cannot proceed with the appointment especially since his tenure is overtly suspect.

This appointment could cause further irreparable harm to the municipality and its residents if an unlawful proxy of Gauteng COGTA MEC Lebogang Maile is appointed. Any permanent appointment would in all likelihood be unlawful and it would fall to the council to address the consequences of such an appointment once it resumes office.

This is a clear indication that Maile will stop at nothing to get his hands into the pockets of the municipality and the hard-earned contributions of the taxpayers in Tshwane.

It has become clear that the unlawfully deployed administrators are attempting to expedite the process of appointing the new city manager and one cannot wonder why, despite the two judgments that have declared the dissolution of the elected city council unlawful.

The unlawfully deployed administrators are intent on being a law unto themselves and continuing to follow unlawful processes and pass resolutions that are not to the benefit of the residents of Tshwane.

The administrator through his legal counsel have informed us over the weekend that they have agreed to put the process on hold for the interim, due to a similar process that was launched by a disgruntled candidate who was shortlisted at the end of 2019 for the position of the City Manager.

We have requested a written undertaking from the administrator that this process will be put on hold until the appeal process is finalised, but they have only provided us with an undertaking that they will wait until 1 August 2020.

The DA is satisfied that the immediate threat has been resolved, but will continue with its application on a normal basis, with a scheduled court date on 21 July 2020.

These decisions and processes need to be transparent and the DA will continue to fight this to ensure that the further unlawful appointment of an ANC-controlled City Manager does not proceed and that the residents and their hard earned tax contributions are protected.

Issued byRandall Williams,DA Tshwane Mayoral Candidate, 22 June 2020