Conscience vote best for appeal on issues around liquor sales
HOT ON the heels of 40 DA councillors who defied their party and voted against a motion of no confidence against Mayor Patricia de Lille and saved her job more and more DA councillors are voting in terms of their conscience.
The latest “vote of conscience” took place at the City of Cape Town’s Appeals Committee last Friday chaired by the speaker with the chief whip as his deputy with nearly a dozen City officials present from the health, environment and planning departments.
The committee consists of five DA councillors and three opposition party councillors from AL JAMA-AH, the ANC and the PAC.
This is a specialised committee and councillors are required to vote according to their conscience and not follow the party line.
Appeals largely come in on property matters and extending liquor trading hours.
In practice it seems the DA councillors continue to vote as a team in this committee and often dismiss decisions of their own councillors in sub-councils. Their view appears to be that extended alcohol trading hours does not contribute to crime in spite of overwhelming research that it does. The chair makes it a point that councillors must not vote as a cabal but act without fear or favour. But this has largely been ignored.
So it gave me much hope when a DA councillor supported the opposition parties and helped dismiss an appeal for an extended liquor trading licence in KTC in Nyanga East, Gugulethu, for an off consumption outlet that wanted extended trading hours Monday to Saturday 6pm to 8pm and on Sundays from 11am to 6pm.
The other DA councillors voted to uphold the appeal in spite of subcouncil 14, the ward Councillor W Yozi and the sub-council chair Councillor N Makasi rejecting the application. The latter are all ANC councillors.
Those of us who voted to dismiss the appeal did so because of the positions of the elected representatives of the community and two sworn affidavits from the South African police force.
A constable, a sergeant and a police captain all stationed at SAPS Gugulethu affirmed in separate affidavits that the outlet violated the Western Cape Liquor Act on more than one occasion during special operations in terms of the Alcohol Harms Reduction game changer initiative of the Western Cape government. The primary focus of the operation was to conduct monitoring and observation duties to determine whether licence holders in the area were trading responsibly.
It is my view that the councillors who voted to support the appeal undermined the efforts of the police and ignored the decisions of the community’s leadership.
Councillor Ganief Hendricks PR councillor AL JAMA-AH Pinelands