Pretoria - The legality of the Tshwane special council meeting hosted virtually yesterday to pass the R44.9 billion budget for the 2022/23 financial year came into question after the ANC and EFF walked out of the proceedings.
The sole councillor of the Republican Conference, Lex Middelberg, also joined the fray when he denounced the meeting as illegal. Middelberg didn’t walk out but maintained that council rules did not provide for a meeting to be hosted online.
“The disaster management regulations have lapsed, and those exceptions are not applicable to this meeting. This meeting is therefore illegal, being conducted virtually,” he said.
ANC chief whip Aaron Maluleka criticised council speaker Dr Murunwa Makwarela for hosting the online meeting on the back of a disruption caused by EFF councillors during last week’s council sitting.
“The meeting is illegal in the manner in which it was called because we knew that we were going to have a hybrid meeting. We had only a few councillors who were not going to attend the meeting, but all of us were going to attend a physical meeting,” he said.
He accused Makwarela of failing to verify the presence of ANC councillors, who had convened at Tshwane House.
“We don’t agree with the manner in which you want to bulldoze all of us. We don’t agree with your Savimbi approach, and we are not scared of you,” he said.
He said the ANC would not support the budget and invited Finance MMC Peter Sutton to engage with the party caucus to find a workable solution.
“We will support those who think that the 75 ANC-led wards deserve to be serviced and deserve an allocation in the pie in the budget,” Maluleka said.
EFF regional leader Obakeng Ramabodu slammed Makwarela for his attitude to those “with different views”.
“I’m consulting the national leadership to see if we can’t take you to court because we can’t stay in a meeting where we’re not allowed to speak,” he said.
He said councillors were not told on time that the meeting would be virtual.
“We don’t agree with the virtual meeting. We think you are suppressing us. You don’t want a different view and are scared of the councillors of the EFF.”
In response, Makwarela said that everything had been done correctly and “everything was done to make sure that we quorate”.
In the absence of both ANC and EFF councillors, a total budget of R44.9bn, consisting of an operating budget of R42.1bn and a capital infrastructure investment budget of R2.8bn, was passed with 108 votes. Three councillors voted against it and two abstained.
FF Plus’s Grandi Theunissen came to Makwarela’s defence, saying his decision to host an online meeting was done for the safety of council members. He said the coalition government had been under attack on several occasions.
“This platform is not being used … in this sphere of government. It is also used in the sphere of national government. It is not seen as illegal by the ruling party inside Parliament,” he said.
The African Christian Democratic Party welcomed the budget, and said it appreciated the R10 million set aside for cable theft in the city to redress the R400m loss due to cable theft.
ActionSA was happy with the R87m allocated to the Expanded Public Works Programme to fight high unemployment levels. It also appreciated an amount of R188m allocated to stimulate economic growth to support the SMMEs and attract investment to the city.
However, it was not happy that the in-sourcing of workers was not prioritised. “In-sourcing is one of the conditions that ActionSA agreed to in terms of our coalition agreement,” it said.
The City’s multiparty coalition said the budget was passed “in an exceptionally difficult financial environment and has been put together to ensure two priorities – driving core basic service delivery while maintaining the financial sustainability of the municipality”.
At least R1.2bn of the capital budget will be used to build, maintain and refurbish critical electricity and water infrastructure, while R154m has been allocated for road maintenance and R62m for pothole and road repairs.
Pretoria News