Subcouncils reconstitute - Part 2

3 Comments

• Posted by ubuntu:1 year ago

  

  I personally think that the mayor of Cape Town should be a person of color as more than 80% of the city is black (coloured and African). It is also unacceptable that 8 out of 10 portfolio committee chairpersons are white males who as a group collectively make up only 8% of the population and are overrepresented by 10 times. This is the apartheid that I am talking about that has returned to the city after 14 years ago when this was supposed to have ended when Nelson Mandela became president.

  Log in to reply
• Posted by Helen:1 year ago

  

  Dear Ubuntu<br><br>
  Thank you for being forthright about your point of view.When it comes to us taking away sub-councils from the ANC, you should note the following facts.<br><br>1) The agreement with Minister Mufamadi covered the previous council as constituted after the elections up until the floor-crossing. After the floor-crossing, the council is reconstituted, and a new set of rules apply for the establishment of sub-councils. The ANC changed the law to allow this. The Municipal Structures Act says that after an election, sub-councils have to be made up of the same ratio of proportional representative (PR) councillors as the ward councillors included in a sub-council. So if there are 5 wards in a sub-council, and 3 of the ward councillors are DA, 1 ID, and 1 ANC, then there has to be 3 DA, 1 ID and 1 ANC PR councillor as well. However, the ANC introduced a new rule in the Municipal Structures Act which says that after a floor-crossing, PR councillors can be distributed much more freely around sub-councils. This enabled the ANC in 2002 to take 16 sub-councils held by the DA and re-arrange them into 20 all held by the ANC.<br><br>2) The ANC therefore needs to learn that when it makes laws, it must make these laws not simply to benefit itself in the short-term, but make them in such a way that when it is not in power, it will also be protected. Perhaps the ANC will now consider scrapping this law, and hopefully floor-crossing in its current form as well.The same applies with the Executive Mayoral system – the ANC introduced the Executive Mayoral system when they were in power. They were happy with it. But when they lost they wanted the Executive Committee system back. MEC Dyantyi tried to bring that system back in an effort to unseat the Multi-Party Government. The ANC also attacked the DA because we had stated our preference for the Executive Committee System ahead of the elections. However, this would have cost us our position. Our number 1 mandate from the voters is to provide an alternative to the ANC, and this must take precedence over the issue of the Executive Mayoral system versus the Executive Committee system. Finally, I would like to point out that the ANC is not excluded from government. The opposition is a critical part of the government in a democracy – both as a watchdog and as an alternative source of critical input. The DA fulfils this role in parliament, and we are proud of what we do. The ANC needs to learn to do the same in Cape Town.<br><br>HZ

  Log in to reply
• Posted by ubuntu:1 year ago

  

  Mrs. Zille you will come to regret your foolish decision to renege on an agreement with Local Government Minister Sydney Mafumadi and Provincial MEC Richard Dyantyi in which there would be an additional 2 subcouncils in areas formerly designated for Africans under apartheid. But instead you decided to kick out 5 African subcoucillors to replace them with members of your shaky coalition that is a form a patronage that you preach against when it is directed primarily against people of color. That is where you wanted to put your puppet ID people safely out of reach of your white mayoral committee, which is DA dominated. How desperate you must be to cling to power. What you did with the subcouncils will be challenged in the courts.

  I hope that the ANC will rake you over the coals for this one. The very least that the MEC can do is to reinstate his original position to dissolve the mayoral committee and to replace it with a far more racially inclusive executive committee system. As for your media charged antics with regard to Padlac and how you have tried to divide black people along ethnic lines by ignoring the plight of gangsterism in African townships while focusing your attention on Mitchell's Plain is divisive and racist.

  Given your illegal gerrymandering of subcouncils and the way you have served the whites in the council against the poor, I intend never to vote for the DA or the Dark Ages party ever again and will vote ANC in 2009. It is only the ANC that can put a stop to this nonsense and they will smash the DA and it's ID puppets in the provincial election.

  Log in to reply

Have your say