Ekurhuleni council chamber
City of Ekurhuleni via Twitter
- An extraordinary sitting of the Ekurhuleni metro ended in chaos on Thursday night.
- Councillors spent most of the meeting fighting about the order of the agenda before the meeting collapsed.
- The motions went ahead despite the speaker and half the council walking out.
After hours of arguing, the Ekurhuleni municipality’s caucus meeting disintegrated into chaos on Thursday night after half the councillors walked out and the rest continued with the meeting.
The extraordinary council meeting started at 13:00 after a time change the night before from 10:00.
The main item on the agenda was a vote of no confidence in speaker Raymond Dhlamini and a motion to suspend the council rule on the six-month wait between motions of no confidence.
As the last motion of no confidence in Ekurhuleni Mayor Tania Campbell took place in October, the next could only take place in April.
On Thursday at 20:00, Dhlamini collapsed the extraordinary council meeting after hours of dissension among councillors rendered it a non-starter. Councillors were fighting the speaker to move the motions closer to the start of the meeting instead of near the end.
The speaker eventually ended the meeting and left, followed by the FF+, IFP, DA, ACDP and ActionSA.
City manager Imogen Mashazi then took over as speaker, leaving many to believe that the continuation of the caucus was illegal.
The remaining parties dealt with the motions and elected EFF councillor Nthabiseng Tshivhenga as interim speaker.
READ | ActionSA calls for resignation of Ekurhuleni mayor after two senior DA councillors call it quits
The motion to suspend the rule on the timing between motions of no confidence was passed, and the supposed next move would be to vote out Campbell.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, ActionSA asked Campbell and her mayoral committee to resign.
In a statement, the party cited the resignation of DA chief whip Khetha Shandu and oversight chairperson Pieter Henning as the reasons for wanting Campbell and her MMCs to step down.
ActionSA Gauteng chairperson Bongani Baloyi said their departure was “indicative of the implosion currently taking place as a result of the DA’s failure to lead coalitions”.