The Democratic Alliance (DA) and Freedom Front Plus in the North West have tabled motions of no confidence against the Speaker of the Provincial Legislature, Susan Dantjie, and her deputy, Viola Motsumi. The parties accuse them of ignoring reports of alleged fraud, corruption and irregularities within the legislature.
The motions come hardly a week after four ANC members, including Premier Job Mokgoro, allegedly colluded with opposition parties in the legislature in voting for the Chair of Chairs. The DA is confident the motion will be passed.
DA Chief Whip, Freddy Sonakile, says the Office of the Speaker is failing to perform its oversight role.
“Basically the legislature is not operating and you will remember that one of the rules of the legislature is to play oversight on other organs of state. So if we can’t get the right leadership for the legislature then, we have a problem. Part of the motion that we have made, we are making a requirement that, we need that motion to be in by secret ballot. Reasons being that we are afraid of issues of intimidation that members might face. You have seen recently with the voting of the Chair of Chairs what exactly happened in the province,” says Sonakile.
EFF Provincial Secretary, Papiki Babuile, says his party is on board. “We are agreeing with all the issues tabled in the motion- and we are currently busy consulting amongst ourselves as the EFF and the leadership of the EFF, and we fully support all those issues.”
The ANC is positive that its members will not vote with opposition parties again. ANC Chief Whip, Paul Sebegoe, elaborates: “We are confident as the ANC in the legislature that such incidents would not happen again. They would not happen; we can assure you the ANC is engaging to resolve whatever issues that could be outstanding. At an appropriate time and if this motion does ultimately serve, the ANC will be intact and it will be able to process issues accordingly.”
Secretary for the legislature, Oageng Mosiane, says the two motions are still being processed.
“The normal Parliament process will follow, there will be programming where these two motions will be programmed for debate in the house. But definitely as the accounting officer of the legislature we are processing two motions to its final conclusion,” Mosiane says.
The DA says it has canvassed enough support from members of other parties, including the ANC:
