No quorum, meeting changed to caucus

MANZINI – The SNAT Extraordinary General Meeting was changed to a caucus as the teachers failed to form a quorum, which some of them said it was a disgrace.

When the meeting was supposed to start at around 10:30am yesterday, SNAT Secretary General (SG) Lot Vilakati tasked his Deputy, Mcolisi Ngcamphalala to count the attendees using the registry to see if the met the constitutional requirement to have the gathering. The SG said this was done because the meeting was called following the constitution of the organisation. He said according to the constitution, they had to be at least a third of the total membership. The total membership of SNAT stands at 11 632, based on subscriptions.

After counting, Vilakati announced that the deputy SG found that only a third of the required number had attended the meeting. Therefore, the SNAT NEC asked the members to guide on what to do going forward. One of them, Simangele ‘Somntwana’ Mtetwa suggested that they should now call the gathering a caucus because they did not form a quorum, but they needed the updates from the NEC. However, she warned them that if they agreed to have a caucus for the sake of getting the updates from the NEC, they should know that they could not take resolutions. “The meeting can only be an information gathering,” Mtetwa said.

Another teacher supported Mtetwa and said they were supposed to have build-up activities in the branches to sensitise members about the meeting. By so doing, he said they would have met the quorum. Again, another of the organisation also supported the suggestion of having a caucus instead of an extraordinary general meeting. However, he said they were worried on how they had reached this situation, where they had become such a disgrace – by not forming a quorum.

Once more, another educator, Zweli Masina said as per the constitution, there was no way they could have an extraordinary general meeting. He said the meeting was null and void, thus he supported the suggesting that the meeting should be changed to a caucus.

Constitution

Wonder Motsa said they had never reached a third of the total membership in the past meetings, but they proceeded. He said there were material things that did not allow some of them to attend the meetings. He argued that the constitution of SNAT was inferior to the Industrial Relations Act of 2000 and Constitution of the Kingdom of Eswatini, which they could use to legitimise the meeting. He then moved a motion that the meeting should continue.

On the same note, another teacher said where he came from, he was representing about 13 other educators, who asked him to attend and come back with feedback. He said he believed that there were other teachers who represented their colleagues either from school or branch, thus when the numbers could be added, they could form the quorum.

He said he was saying this well aware that such was not covered in the constitution. The SNAT members emphasised that there should be build-up activities at branch levels. Others suggested that the NEC members should split the branches among themselves and to the members at grass root level to gather what was preventing them from participating in the activities of the union, including meetings.