The City of Tshwane and four other municipalities survived a high court bid to be immediately dissolved and placed under administration.
|||Pretoria - The City of Tshwane and four other municipalities have survived a high court bid to be immediately dissolved and placed under administration. The others were Madibeng, Moretele, Matlosana and Tlokwe.
The application was brought by Agency for New Agenda - the same party that previously tried in court to have the Springboks kicked out of the Rugby World Cup.
On Friday, the applicant succeeded in having a warrant issued for Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu, who had ignored a subpoena to appear in person and instead sent a lawyer.
Three judges in the high court in Pretoria dismissed the latest matter on a technicality and urged the applicant to follow due processes.
But the matter remains open.
The Tshwane municipality has since rubbished the court action, saying it was a recycled attempt to discredit the leadership of mayor Kgosientso Ramokgopa.
The city received an unqualified audit opinion from Makwetu, but was alleged to have incurred R4 billion in irregular expenditure, in a leaked draft report. When the audit-general presented the official report to the council, irregular expenditure stood at R1.2bn.
Ramokgopa’s spokesman, Blessing Manale, said: “We believe there is no environment evident to warrant such an application. Therefore the court action constitutes nothing but a waste of energy by the applicants. The capital is far from a state of maladministration,” he said.
Tshidiso Mokhoanatse has vowed this was only a start.
He was planning on taking on many more municipalities, plus provincial and national departments as part of his #LocalGovernmentMustFall campaign. He believed that unaccountable local municipalities had to be dissolved.
On Friday, he confronted three judges with a six-page list of demands. These included that the court declared the management - in particular financial management - of these municipalities grossly negligent and guilty of maladministration. Their managers and mayors should be declared unfit to hold office and be given the boot, he said. He also called for a forensic audit into the financial affairs of these municipalities.
Showing that he meant business, Mokhoanatse subpoenaed Makwetu to be at court to testify about his findings.
Makwetu sent a lawyer to represent him in court - the warrant against him was withdrawn as the cases could not go ahead.
The judges removed the applications from the roll, saying they did not adhere to the rules of court.
Most of the respondents had noted that they would oppose the application, but only a few sent legal representatives to court.
None responded to Mokhoanatse’s allegations and said they needed time to draw up responding affidavits.
Judge Neil Tuchten said Mokhoanatse must send the sheriff of the court to serve the application on the respondents; he could not do so himself.
He also told Mokhoanatse that this was not the end of his legal pursuit, as he could still lodge his application once he had followed the correct legal route. Mokhoanatse was advised to seek legal advice to advance his cause, as he was fighting an extremely complex battle. Mokhoanatse said the yearly reports by the auditor-general showed a pattern of maladministration and financial mismanagement at these municipalities.
The reports point to irregular, wasteful and unauthorised spending as well as gross incompetence to run these municipalities, he said.He told the court that neither he nor his party could afford legal assistance in launching these applications. “In bringing this application, I was driven by a deep sense of civic duty to the rule of law and to the Constitution of the country.”
A municipality can be placed under administration for:
- Failure to make payment, if expenditure exceeds revenue, an operating deficit, late submission of audited financial statements or a disclaimed audit opinion.
- Failure to pay a lender or investor, meet contractual obligations as security for loans, make substantial payments, continuous failure to meet obligations that impact on supply chain management.
- Failure to approve the budget or any revenue raising measures linked to the Constitution.
zelda.venter@inl.co.za
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