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High Court upholds order for Speaker to call council meeting to elect NMB Mayor

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Dear MyPE

The Port Elizabeth High Court has upheld its earlier decision that the Nelson Mandela Bay Speaker, ANC Cllr Buyelwa Mafaya, must call a council meeting to elect an Executive Mayor within seven days.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomes the judgment handed down by Judge Irma Schoeman yesterday that in the main dismissed the Municipality’s appeal against the earlier court order. (judgment attached)

In August of this year Judge Schoeman ordered that the Speaker be directed to convene a council meeting within seven days of the court order and that the council agenda must include the election of a Mayor.

The judge also ordered that the Speaker and the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality must pay the cost of the original court application.

Judge Schoeman found that I had every right to bring the original application for a council meeting in my capacity as both a councillor and ratepayer. This is a victory for the long-suffering residents and ratepayers of Nelson Mandela Bay, as it acknowledges their rights to hold the Municipality to account when it fails to adhere to the law.

The Speaker was yet again ordered to convene a council meeting within the next seven days in order to, amongst other things, elect an Executive Mayor. The Speaker and the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality were also ordered to carry the cost of the application for leave to appeal.

The judge did grant the Speaker and Municipality leave to appeal against the DA giving me authority to act on behalf of the party. This point is, however, a technical one and quite frankly moot as I was fully within my rights to act as the second applicant. (See page 6, paragraph 10 of the judgment).

Yesterday’s judgment follows more than two years after the ANC-led Coalition of Corruption removed the DA and its coalition partners from government and almost a year since this Metro has had a lawfully elected Executive Mayor.

Under the DA and its coalition partners, the City was financially stable, and service delivery was a priority, but within only two short years the ANC-led Coalition of Corruption has brought financial ruin and total service delivery collapse to the City.

The DA will make sure that good governance and accountability return to Nelson Mandela Bay and will work tirelessly to turn this Metro around. We can fix this mess – we have done it before, and we will, together with our coalition partners and the people of Nelson Mandela Bay, do it again.

Regards

Cllr Morne Steyn
DA NMB member of the Municipal Public Accounts Committee

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Port Elizabethan

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