DA scored own goal with ‘unlawful’ votes for Tshwane speaker

Despite crying foul, the Democratic Alliance (DA) has been told by a lawyer that its votes to elect a new speaker in the City of Tshwane were unlawful.

African Transformation Movement (ATM) councillor Mncedi Ndzwanana was elected as the Tshwane council speaker in the early hours of Tuesday, much to the dismay of the multi-party coalition.

Ndzwanana beat ActionSA councillor Kholofelo Morodi by 105 to 37 votes.

The voting process was held by secret ballot.

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A total of 69 votes, however, were disregarded and marked spoilt by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) after DA councillors marked their ballots differently, instead of the usual “X”.

According to DA councillor Cilliers Brink, the party had instructed their members to mark ballots with allocated numbers in order to identify which candidate they voted for.

As a result, the IEC declared the 69 votes as spoilt ballots.

This meant Morodi would have won by 106 votes if the disqualified votes were counted.

‘No confusion or ambiguity’

The DA and its coalition partners – Action SA, Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) and Freedom Front Plus (FF+) – have since expressed their dissatisfaction about the vote’s outcome.

In a statement, the multi-party coalition criticised the IEC for not including the DA’s ballot in the vote.

“During the counting process the DA, ActionSA and FF Plus party agents pointed to the fact that the 69 ballots clearly indicated the intention of voters. There was no confusion or ambiguity in the markings. Neither were any ballots defaced. The IEC classified the 69 votes as spoilt based on the fact that they were marked not with a crosses but with numbers.

“Yet in the IEC’s own literature, one of the examples of a valid vote is one where the intention of the voter is indicated by the marking of a number,” the parties said on Tuesday.

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“We believe that IEC officials were under pressure by the ANC and the EFF to discard these ballots in order to ensure the election of their preferred speaker candidate.”

The parties indicated that it would consult with its lawyers on the matter.

However, a legal opinion has indicated that the DA broke the law by seeking to lift the veil of secrecy of a secret ballot vote.

“What the DA did was unlawful. The IEC has individual requirements that if a voter’s identity is disclosed on the ballot paper, the vote is spoiled. It was not a clever strategy so there will be no litigation,” a party leader close to the coalition told News24.

The voting process was delayed for hours on Monday, after a previous round had to be abandoned.

The IEC believed that the process was “compromised” after councillors from the African National Congress (ANC) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) stormed the voting area, grabbed a ballot box.

Rush for new mayor

Meanwhile, Ndzwanana’s election will pave the way for the City to elect a new mayor following Congress of the People (Cope) councillor Dr Murunwa Makwarela’s resignation.

Makwarela resigned both as mayor and PR councillor last Friday, after submitting what has since been declared a fraudulent rehabilitated certificate for his insolvency.

The City still needs to pass the adjustment budget.

Treasury gave the metropolitan municipality until 24 March to pass the budget, according to City of Tshwane spokesperson Selby Bokaba.

“For us to continue rendering services, we need to pass the adjustment budget which was supposed to have been passed at the end of February, but that didn’t happen because we didn’t have a mayor and the mayoral committee. So the City manager has engaged with National Treasury and asked for an extension which was granted until the end of March,” Bokaba said last week.

“We are hoping that all these processes will be concluded so that we can pass the adjustment budget. If we are unable to do so the services in Tshwane will be grounds to a halt and the consequences is that we may even be placed under administration.”

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