The battle for the City of Tshwane is far from over

The Democratic Alliance (DA) says it will file papers in the Pretoria high court on Monday to ask it to order the judgement to overturn the dissolution of Tshwane Council to be effective immediately.

The party has also indicated its intentions to oppose the application for leave to appeal by the ANC and EFF to reverse the judgement to dissolve the council.

The City of Tshwane was placed under administration by the provincial government following numerous collapses of council meetings.

In the video below, Premier Makhura explains the rationale behind the decision to put Tshwane under administration:

This decision was however overturned by the court in April.

The battle for the capital city is far from over. The DA is doing all it can to make sure it remains in power.

The party says it will be opposing applications by both the ANC and the EFF which seek to overturn the ruling by the high court in Pretoria that the decision to place Tshwane under administration was wrong.

DA chairperson in Gauteng Mike Moriarty says: “We will file papers to oppose the direct access to the Constitutional Court by both the ANC and the EFF. We will oppose another motion by the EFF or leave to appeal in the Supreme Court of Appeal.”

But more than anything else, the DA wants to go back to office immediately.

Currently the party can’t go back to govern pending the applications to appeal. The city continues to be run by the administrators.

The DA will also be filing papers to ask the court to order the judgement to overturn the dissolution of Tshwane Council to be effective immediately.

Mayoral candidate Randal Williams, says exceptional circumstances exist that the judgement should be implemented with immediate effect.

“The fact that administrators are going to take serious decisions which will bind the legitimate council that was elected by the residence of Tshwane. For example, by end of June, the budget for 2020/2021 has to be approved and if the administrators approve that budget before councilors, it means that we are bound by that budget. They can also go ahead and do things like appoint a permanent city manager, or a lot of their actions could bind the legitimate council and we will have absolutely no control over it.”

Speaker Katlego Mathebe has also raised concerns on how administrators are handling of issues in the city.

“When we go through with the budget process in terms of the MFMA, we have to go for public consultations and especially now with the COVID-19 regulations; we don’t even know if the administrators have thought of a method of doing those public consultations, because in my understanding they have not even considered that budget.”