Activists give premier Mabuyane ultimatum on Sakhisizwe turnaround
Premier Oscar Mabuyane has shot down any suggestion of placing the broke Sakhisizwe municipality under administration, but the students who made the suggestion appear to be gearing up for a court battle.
The Cala University Students Association (Calusa) wrote to Mabuyane on May 11, demanding the provincial government dissolve the municipality. The students’ letter carried an ultimatum: dissolve the council by the end of June or face legal action.
In a responding June 24 letter to the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (Cals), which is representing the students, Mabuyane said: “The province has had close engagements with the municipality to identify challenges that beset the municipality and to determine measures to resolve those challenges.
“We have, to this end, invoked the provisions of section 154 of the constitution to support the functions of the municipality in line with a clearly defined turnaround plan that was developed with the objective of ameliorating areas of concern in the operations of the municipality.” Mabuyane said this process included co-operative governance & traditional affairs (Cogta) MEC Xolile Nqatha seconding an experienced official from his department as acting municipal manager with clear instructions to implement a turnaround plan.
Mabuyane added: “The provincial treasury actively joins in facilitating and overseeing change in the municipality for the benefit of the affected communities. The support in the Sakhisizwe local municipality in terms of section 154 of the constitution is well in progress.”
The students asked the premier to dissolve the municipality in terms of section 139 of the constitution. Section 139(1) affords the provincial executive the necessary discretion to consider measures to intervene in the local government sphere where the specific circumstances must warrant the course of intervention.
“I am unfortunately not persuaded that the invocation of section 139[1][c] of the constitution is required in the Sakhisizwe local municipality, at least not at this stage,” Mabuyane said.
But on Monday Cals again wrote to Mabuyane expressing the students’ concern about the state of the municipality.
It said the students had “not seen the improvement in the running of the municipality” which Mabuyane referred to in his responding letter.
The students demanded to be handed all information before Mabuyane and Nqatha which led to the provincial government seconding an official to the municipality as well as the turnaround plan, a progress report on implementation by the acting municipal manager and a detailed report of provincial treasury’s involvement in turning the municipality around.
They want all this information by Thursday.