The J.B. Marks municipality was in court on 13 September for an urgent application against the provincial government’s earlier decision to place the municipality under administration.

The application in Mahikeng high court was dismissed with costs.

“Council was taken by surprise on the appointment of the administrator since there had been a mutual understanding that the Province would come and report back following the engagement of joint technical teams that were set up to investigate areas where the Province would intervene if so required,” said William Maphosa, municipal spokesperson, about the reason the municipality challenged the decision in court.

Chris Hattingh, a DA councillor in the municipality warned of the outcome before the court case.

“The DA is of the opinion that this urgent High Court application, which is desperately pursued by the ANC and some ANC aligned councillors, is bound to fail with substantial costs to taxpayers. There appears to be no regard that money spent on frivolous court cases are at the cost of the taxpayer, the ANC cannot continue to handle the public purse as their own piggy-bank. The DA is now in full support of an investigative intervention led by a competent, suitably qualified and experienced administrator,” he said in an earlier statement.

This was after the DA asked for a special council meeting on 5 September to dispute the authorisation allegedly given by the JB Marks Council to approach the High Court in an urgent application.

In response, Maphosa noted that everyone was taken aback by the DA’s sudden change of mind in this regard. The proposal to go the legal route, in fact, came from the DA itself through their member, Mr. H J Moolman after they had requested a brief caucus during the previous council meeting. We challenge the DA and the media to listen to the verbal recordings of the proceedings of the meeting and they will have this fact confirmed.

In the council meeting, Moolman noted that the council cannot simply ignore a decision taken by the provincial government and that if council believes that the decision to place the municipality under administration is wrong it must get a legal opinion before going to court.

According to him, this legal opinion should have been served before the council for consideration, before a decision to approach the court was made.

The decision to place the municipality under administration still stands.

This is a developing story more about this issue in next week’s edition of the Herald.