O R Tambo in 11th-hour court bid
THE O R Tambo district municipality was engaged in a lastminute scramble yesterday to block the attachment of its movable assets by the sheriff.
The district authority has failed to pay R73.4-million it owes to the Department of Water and Sanitation for water used since April 2011.
Yesterday, when deputy sheriff of the high court Thuso Majokweni went to the municipality to seize assets he found he could not go ahead as the municipality had moved to go head-to-head with the Minister of Water and Sanitation, Nomvula Mokonyane, in the Mthatha High Court today in a bid to have the order rescinded. The matter is set for 2pm. According to urgent papers citing Mokonyane and the sheriff of the Mthatha High Court as respondents, the district municipality wants the writ of execution issued by the court on November 28 to be stayed pending final determination of the rescission application to be launched within 30 days. O R Tambo also wants the sheriff to be directed to “desist from removing the attached goods”.
The district municipality also wants the minister and the sheriff to pay for the costs of the application.
O R Tambo acting manager Bongani Matomela asked the court in his affidavit to freeze execution of the November 28 order.
“In 2014, the chief financial officer [of O R Tambo] was engaged in negotiations with one Mr Mofokeng [of Water and Sanitation].
“Such negotiations were intended to discuss the possibility of writing off a debt owed by an erstwhile local municipality which now falls under its jurisdiction. It transpired later that [Mokonyane] had already handed [O R Tambo] to lawyers for collection,” wrote Matomela.
The municipality, in the spirit of exhausting internal remedies, had then requested a meeting with the CFO of the South African Local Government Association (Salga) to amicably resolve dispute.
Matomela said in June 2016 O R Tambo officials attended a meeting with Mokonyane’s lawyers to resolve the dispute. “To our surprise and when we were still negotiating with the [minister] the [district municipality] was served with summons dated August 31.
“Since the applicant and the respondent are organs of state, the applicant referred such summons to the National Treasury for possible intervention as this is the normal practice of InterGovernmental Relation.
“While the applicant was waiting for response from Treasury, the respondent sought default judgment for the debt owing.
“Such default judgment application was never served on the applicants [O R Tambo],” he said.
Matomela said the district municipality was only served with the court order granting default judgment on October 26.
In an attempt to seek help in the spirit of avoiding litigation, [O R Tambo] “wrote letters to the President, Finance Minister, Cogta Minister, Eastern Cape Cogta MEC, provincial treasury MEC and Treasury deputy director-general and on November 15 our attorneys requested for the execution to be stayed,” said Matomela.
He said while they were waiting for a response from Mokonyane’s lawyers on the rescission, they were served with the order of attachments of goods. —