WHILE members of the public are encouraged to attend Full Council meetings to better understand decisions taken regarding service delivery and the effective management of the City, eThekwini Municipality has said they are encouraged to adhere to the rules of the seating.
Tozi Mthethwa, head of communications for eThekwini Municipality, said this comes after Speaker William Mapena asked members of the public, comprising mostly of residents from the Bottlebrush Informal Settlement, seated in the gallery of City Hall to leave the meeting, as Mthethwa said the group grew increasingly rowdy when an item regarding electrification at the informal settlement was being discussed.
Speaker Mapena reminded the public that they were present as guests during the meeting and urged them to abide by the Rules of Order governing the meeting. However, despite repeated requests to quiet down and allow proceedings to continue the public continued to disrupt the meeting. Security was then called in to assist members of the public to quietly leave the meeting.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) responded to this incident, stating it was appalled by Mapena’s order to have the residents forcefully removed.
Councillor Sharon Hoosen, DA Chief Whip, said the residents of Bottlebrush, where around 11 000 people reside, attended the council meeting to find out why, after more than a decade, they still do not have access to electricity. She said residents had called on the municipality for years to electrify the area, without any success.
Hoosen said according to residents, there have been countless incidents of adults and children getting electrocuted due to the illegal electricity connections, and the municipality has done nothing to address this.
“During the Council meeting, residents became agitated when once again no date could be provided for the electrification of the area. The Speaker then called for an adjournment of the meeting and ordered the Metro Police, armed with shotguns, to forcefully remove the residents. It is clear that the ANC-run eThekwini municipality does not care about the needs or the safety of the people of Bottlebrush. In fact, they have so little empathy with this community that they would rather forcefully remove them from the chambers, where they had a right to be, instead of supporting them and providing the necessary service delivery,” said Hoosen.
She said the DA finds the behaviour of the ANC in eThekwini disgraceful.
“Unlike the ANC we do not accept that children play in areas with dangerous illegal electricity connections or that women have to walk home at night in complete darkness. The people of eThekwini deserve better. The DA will continue to do everything in our power to ensure that the thousands of residents of Bottlebrush urgently receive legal electricity connections as well as other basic services that were denied this neglected community for too long,” said Hoosen.
Responding to the incident, Mapena said there are rules that should be followed and processes be adhered to in Council meetings.
“If you are a guest of someone you abide by their rules. You cannot be a law unto yourself. Whether this disruption was staged or not, it should not happen again. If you want to picket you are allowed to do so by following the correct processes to protest in a legal manner,” he said.
He added if the disruption was planned by any councillor he encouraged them to desist from doing so again as it is against the rules.
At a later stage of the meeting Speaker Mapena asked a councillor to leave after he disrupted the meeting. After the councillor refused to do so, Speaker Mapena requested security management to assist the councillor to leave so the meeting could continue uninterrupted.
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