Apart from the mayor having to explain to the DA why he hasn’t resigned yet, the EFF once again got things off to an interesting start at the first Ekurhuleni council meeting of 2018.
Held in the Germiston Council Chambers on February 22, the meeting kicked off with several disruptions by the EFF, whose members were demanding an apology from ANC members who had allegedly accused them of stealing money.
After back and forth arguing, Chief whip Jongizizwe Dlabathi eventually told the EFF to table a formal motion so that the matter could be dealt with on another day.
It wasn’t long, however, before the EFF was called to order again, when one of its members addressed Clr Ndosi Shongwe as “gogo” (granny).
Alderman Patricia Khumalo, speaker of council, rapped the member over the knuckles, ordering him to withdraw his statement “because during council sittings everyone should address each other as councillors, not gogos”.
Mayor Mzwandile Masina eventually took to the podium, opening his address with condolences to the SAPS officers who lost their lives in Engcobo in the Eastern Cape.
Masina congratulated Cyril Ramaphosa on his election as president of the country, and welcomed finance minister Malusi Gigaba’s budget speech.
“Ramaphosa and Gigaba’s speeches outline both the strategic policy areas of focus for the year ahead and the financial allocations to those areas,” the mayor said. “We as the executive and the administration of the metro have already been working on aligning the strategic thrust of those two speeches from national government with our own policy plans for the year.”
According to Masina, the metro has also been occupied with the important business of budget adjustments and reflecting on the auditor-general’s report.
“The auditor-general gave the Ekurhuleni metro an unqualified audit opinion. This unqualified audit is an important collective achievement in this first year of office for council and the administration, notwithstanding some faults of social media reporting, especially by Ekurhuleni employees for political reasons. This will have to be dealt with internally as we cannot continue feeding hyenas.”
Masina said the metro will still carry out the implementation of its 10-point plan.
“This plan remains our most robust economic recovery and development framework. It is our sustainable approach to creating jobs, economic growth and transformation.
“Through the 10-point plan as our economic framework, we already have a sense of what we should do in order to benefit from both public and private investment this year. Already, last year, we hosted an important manufacturing indaba that brought together investors, government, labour and other role players,” Masina said.
As soon as it was question and answer time, a DA councillor asked Masina when he was going to resign as he had previously stated he wouldn’t serve in a government under Ramaphosa.
Masina replied that he had been misquoted and never in fact uttered such words, so no, he would not be resigning.
