Mashaba nearly seizes Luthuli House for court costs of ANC motion against him

The ANC in Johannesburg has managed to step in and prevent the branch from losing the party’s headquarters, the Chief Albert Luthuli House.

The ANC and the City of Johannesburg met and reached an amicable solution.

This after Johannesburg city mayor Herman Mashaba gave the ANC a deadline for June 15 to settle a debt of R300 000 in legal fees owed to the city and its residents.

Mashaba said the city had obtained a writ of execution against the ANC for its failure to pay R300 000 in legal fees owed.

The solution reached comes after the mayor said that the days of the ANC being able to abuse public money in the city were over and the city planned to execute the court order should the ANC fail to make payment.

In September 2017 the ANC brought an urgent application to the High Court in Johannesburg in an effort to table a motion of no confidence against speaker Vasco Da Gama and the mayor by secret ballot.

According to the city’s desk, the court struck the ANC’s application off the roll and awarded costs in favour of the city as a result of the matter being “devoid of urgency”.

The city says the unfortunate part of the incident was that the court’s time and taxpayers’ money had been used to prove a point.  The city said the ANC was not obeying the court’s decision to pay for the city’s legal costs.

“This R300 000 belongs to the residents of this City,” said Mashaba, who added that they planned to instruct lawyers to proceed with the execution of the court order‚ which would result in Luthuli House property being seized from the ANC’s headquarters by the sheriff of the high court.

The ANC said they only learned that Mashaba planned to attach their assets  when he released a statement this week.