It’s about time public representatives became truly accountable to us

It’s not often we agree with Helen Zille, but we certainly hope the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) federal chair is correct in her assessment of the importance of a precedent-setting ruling in the High Court in Johannesburg.

Effectively, the court warned elected officials, like councillors and municipal officers, that they can’t collude to subvert legal processes and expect to get away with it. Not only that, if their illegal behaviour ends up before a court, they will be held personally accountable financially.

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Zille said: “It is a crucial line in the sand for all public officials. They cannot become the pawns of a political party giving them instructions to act against the law. They have to remain independent and professionally implement the plans of the legitimate government of the day. It is a crucial precedent that will reverberate in future years.”

The DA and Ekurhuleni speaker Raymond Dhlamini went to court after Ekurhuleni city manager Imogen Mashazi illegally called a special council meeting that resulted in Dhlamini’s ousting and the installation of the Economic Freedom Fighters’ (EFF) Nthabiseng Tshivhenga.

Acting Judge AC Dodson said in his ruling Mashazi was acting on unlawful instructions from a number of political parties in council and was not a “lone ranger”.

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He warned city administrators and public representatives they will be personally liable for legal costs, should this behaviour be repeated. He also reminded them of their constitutional obligations.

It is about time that our rulers and their enablers in the so-called civil service became truly accountable to us, the people who pay their salaries.

If these people realised that riding roughshod over the constitution and the best interests of the majority of the people in their towns and cities would hit them in the pocket, perhaps they would act ethically and not out of self-interest.

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