Durban — Political analysts have labelled the DA’s call for the dissolution of the eThekwini council as “too ambitious”.
On Tuesday, KwaZulu-Natal DA leader Francois Rogers announced that after extensive consultation with the provincial leadership, the party’s eThekwini caucus had decided that the council had to be dissolved.
Rogers said the DA had done everything in its power to constructively engage Mayor Mxolisi Kaunda, Municipal Manager Musa Mbhele and senior officials to ensure that eThekwini was saved from further collapse, but the party’s relentless efforts had been met with constant excuses of infrastructure collapse and sabotage.
“Following extensive consultation with the DA provincial leadership, the DA eThekwini caucus reached a bold but needed decision to call for the dissolution of the City’s council under the Municipal Structures Act. This follows the collapse of service delivery under the watch of the ANC-EFF coalition. Water, electricity, and sanitation services, to name a few, have all suffered a similar fate of dysfunctionality.
“The supply of water and electricity, which should be the norm, has now become the exception with more than 1 million residents suffering consistent outages; in some cases lasting for weeks on end,” the DA said.
However, two senior political analysts professors, Sipho Seepe and Bheki Mngomezulu, said the call was ambitious for the DA and was not likely to see the light.
Seepe called it a big mountain to climb. Making a call was a simple exercise, but proving the dysfunctionality of the council was another thing. He said dissolving a council needed one to prove that the council was really dysfunctional. He did not see ANC Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs MEC, Bongi SitholeMoloi, agreeing to that.
Seepe said even if the DA could produce valid reasons for its call, he doubted that the ANC would heed a call from the opposition because by doing so the party would be admitting that it had failed.
“I think it was grandstanding by the DA. They are too ambitious and I don’t see them succeeding. The easiest option is to file a motion against the speaker and the mayor because appealing to the ANC MEC to dissolve the ANC-led council would be expecting her to accept that the party has failed.”
His sentiments were echoed by Mngomezulu, who said for that to happen the DA would have to win over people from the ANC since it did not have the numbers by itself.
Mdu Nkosi, the IFP leader in eThekwini, said his party would not comment on the DA’s proposal since it was still waiting for the motion it filed earlier this month for Kaunda’s removal.
However, African Democratic Change councillor Visvin Reddy said his party was fully in support of the call, saying service delivery – a core function of the municipality – had totally collapsed.
In terms of the Municipal Systems Act, the provincial Cogta MEC was empowered to dissolve the council. The municipality, he said, would have to be totally dysfunctional for the dissolution to happen.
In eThekwini, Cogta has tried to intervene through section 154 but had to back off after resistance, apparently from ANC councillors. MEC Sithole-Moloi said her department has not received any correspondence from the DA on the matter.
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