Councilors throw objects, ‘howl’ and ‘steal mayor’s phone’ at chaotic Ekurhuleni council meeting

Chaos erupted at an Ekurhuleni Council Meeting on Thursday night as EFF members caused disruption and had to be physically removed during a sitting that included a motion of no-confidence tabled against mayor Sivuyile Ngondwana.

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Council members were seen throwing paper and small objects around the chamber and lifting their chairs as though to use them as weapons.

It even appeared that a councillor stole the mayor’s phone during the chaos.

Removing the mayor

The motion was filed by ActionSA, which accused Ngondwana and his mayoral committee of poor performance.

MMC for Finance Nkululeko Dunga was among those forcibly removed by Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Police Department (EMPD) officials.

“It is a question of extreme disappointment at the attitude of councillors,” Dunga said outside the council buildings.

“We were not given opportunities to raise any points of orders that are legitimate by nature.

“And when they are accepted or taken into consideration, there is a lot of howling from the opposition benches, inclusive of the ANC themselves, who obviously came into this meeting with the predetermined outcome that they would be willing to support and vote with the Rupert establishment of the DA and the politically-bankrupt ActionSA, who collapsed the city of Tshwane, by the way.”

The ANC-EFF relationship

When asked to comment on the ANC Youth League’s statement that the ANC and EFF relationship is an ‘unholy marriage’, he said the ANC Youth League has not truly existed for a long time, but those who now run the organisation are piggybacking on what is trending rather than being trend-setters and leaders in society themselves.

“We do not have a relationship with the ANC outside [of] having constituted a government, [which] they have consistently said that they are aggrieved by.

“Their basis of aggrievement has not been that we have not delivered on the basic deliverables towards the people of Ekurhuleni.

“They’ve always based it on self-preservation, where the complaint has always been that the EFF public representatives are outshining the ANC and we are taking the lead in terms of service delivery and leading programmes in the city of Ekruhuleni and over-shadowing them and their existence.”

Lack of service delivery

ActionSA’s motion of no confidence follows the absence of the auditor-general’s report into the city’s finances, with council members accusing the mayor and Dunga of hiding the report.

However, the motion may come unstuck as, according to Ekurhuleni, the report has not been released yet.

Aside from financial woes, an extreme lack of service delivery has also been pointed out as a reason for the lack of faith in the mayor and his MMCs.

“What is happening is that some of the contracts, particularly waste collection is coming to an end in June 2024,” Dunga said.

“These are contracts that existed prior to EFF governance, and prior to that, even the racist DA. These are cadres of the ANC who obviously want to regain control in terms of the allocation of tenders and the influencing thereof.”

He said the EFF had been able to create internal control systems that could reject any corrupt relationships that might exist in the area of supply chain management.

“These people… they are the instigators of non-service delivery in the City of Ekurhuleni.”

Eskom takes back control over load shedding

Earlier in the day, Eskom revealed it was taking back control over load shedding in the municipality, citing the city’s failure to “reduce the load as required”.

The utility announced on Thursday that this was in breach of the NRS 048-9:2019 code of practice.

“The recurrence of Eskom taking over load shedding in Ekurhuleni follows the close monitoring and analysis conducted by the power utility, which shows that the city does not reduce the load as required by NRS 048-9:2019,” Eskom said.

“Eskom brought to the attention of the city, on numerous occasions, its failure to load shed its customers in keeping with the agreed regulations. On previous occasions, Eskom has taken back the role of load shedding the CoE customers.”

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