Several ANC councillors left chambers on Tuesday after accusing Johannesburg executive mayor Herman Mashaba of lying in his State of the City address.
Two other councillors were removed after accusations that they were attempting to disrupt the mayor’s address.
The pair had to be escorted out of chambers by security following the exit of the ANC councillors, after they called for the council speaker to count the remaining councillors to see if there was still a quorum – a minimum amount of councillors needed for the address to proceed.
Patriotic Alliance councillor Lloyd Phillips said, according to TimesLive: “We are not going to be undermined nor are we going to be abused by this house. We want a count, that’s all.”
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This did not convince security, who removed him.
It was, however, pointed out that a quorum was not needed for the address.
“Then the mayor could have just invited the DA since he turned it into a campaign,” Phillips said prior to his removal.
“Why is he inviting us? If he doesn’t need a quorum, why is he inviting us? I think you just need to check on the rules again and try to assist us in an appropriate way.”
The pair will be referred to the ethics committee for “misbehaving”, according to Johannesburg MMC for public safety, the DA’s Michael Sun.
The ANC councillors reportedly left because they were unhappy with Mashaba’s claims in the address that his local government had to struggle with “backlogs” after taking over from the ANC.
According to the mayor, “the quantum of these backlogs is so great, and it’s legacy so severe, that overcoming them is a journey we must travel together”.
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He mentioned “infrastructure backlogs exceeding R170 billion”, “4,000 km of broken roads and 700 crumbling bridges” which he said arose “from [an] R18 billion backlog in our transport network”.
He also said there was a “staggering housing backlog of over 300,000 units [which had] led to a legacy of land desperation, backyard dwellings, and shack farming”.
He said there was a “R60 billion backlog in our electricity network resulting in over 170,000 power outages each year” and “a water network backlog of R18 billion which sprung over 45,000 leaks, losing 107 billion litres of this precious resource” annually.
He added that his administration found “just over 200 informal settlements in which our residents lived in the most appalling conditions”.
“This was the truly daunting inheritance the multi-party government had to come to terms with,” Mashaba added.
(Compiled by Daniel Friedman)