GMM speaker and the mayor survive motion
This council sitting was postponed twice that day.
The Govan Mbeki executive mayor, Nhlakanipho Zuma and the council speaker, Fikile Magagamela survived a motion of no confidence tabled by the Azanian Residents Party in a council meeting held in Secunda on Thursday, October 27.
This council sitting was postponed twice that day.
The meeting was set to begin at 09:00 but was postponed for about an hour because the administration was still preparing the documents.
The siting resumed at 10:00 but was again postponed until 14:00. This delay was due to the unavailability of water in the toilets.
A large part of the Secunda CBD was without water on Thursday. Councillors said they were unable to continue with the meeting because of the water situation. Some described the situation as hazardous.
When the councillors returned to the council chambers that afternoon, the meeting became stuck on the motion of no confidence.
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Councillors from the Democratic Alliance, African Transformation Movement, and Inkatha Freedom Party, Freedom Front Plus supported the ARP’s motion while the Economic Freedom Fighters abstained from voting and the African National Congress councillors rejected the motion.
Magagamela took the motion to a vote if it can stand as a council item. After the votes were tallied and the results announce, a heated argument erupted between Magagamela and those in favour of the motion.
Magagamela said the ANC secured 22 votes and the ARP, DA, ATM, FF+ and IFP also got 22 votes combined.
The speaker then casted her vote with that of the ANC, putting them in the lead with one vote, as other councillors from her party were not present at the meeting.
All parties who were supporting the motion disputed the results. Recounting was conducted and Magagamela announced that the ANC clinched 23 votes while the parties who supported the motion got 21 votes.
According to Magagamela a councillor from the opposition must have abstained from voting in the second round.
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Mayor Zuma then corrected her, saying the results remained the same as the previous round of 23 votes for the ANC and 22 for those supporting the motion.
This sparked another argument that led to the councillors who supported the motion to walk out of the council meeting.
Magagamela later adjourned the meeting. Its not the first time Council reached a deadlock on one motion. Magamela also escaped a motion of no confidence tabled against her in March.
The motion for her removal as speaker was then forwarded by the African Transformation Movement (ATM) and supported by the DA, EFF, FF Plus, IFP and ARP councillors who are jointly in majority.
The DA took the matter to court. They wanted the court to declare that Magagamela was no longer the speaker and to order the acting municipal manager to call a council meeting to elect a new speaker.
The DA had hoped that if the MM failed to call such a meeting, the court would have asked the MEC of CoGTA, in line with the structures act, to appoint somebody to call the council meeting to elect the new speaker.
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They also wanted the former acting municipal manager at the time, Lizzy Tshabalala, to pay all costs of court proceedings
The Middelburg High Court, however, struck the Democratic Alliance’s application to remove Magagamela, from her office, off the roll with costs in June.
The high court ruled that the DA application was not urgent and raised technicalities in their applications.
While the council on Thursday dwelled on this issue, neither other service delivery items were discussed nor the issue of the former municipal manager, Felani Mndebele.
The CCMA ruled that the Govan Mbeki Municipality must cough up R1,6m to Mndebele by the end of October.
The CMMA also found GMM’s dismissal of Felani Mndebele procedurally and substantively unfair.
