Tshwane mayor met with insults

ANC councillors disrupt state of capital address

The ANC has again made it difficult for other parties to run municipalities the ruling party lost in last year’s local government elections.

The latest “victim” of this strategy is City of Tshwane mayor Solly Msimanga who found himself embroiled in a commotion yesterday while trying to deliver his first state of the capital address.

Yesterday, ANC councillors stood their ground that Msimanga would not deliver the address on a day that Solomon Mahlangu was hanged by the apartheid government in 1979.

The scenes resembled those of parliament when the EFF disrupts proceedings.

“I want to know, do you want to hang Solomon Mahlangu for the second time and open our wounds?” ANC councillor Lesego Makhubela asked speaker Rachel Mathebe.

Blood spilt inside the Nelson Mandela Bay metro in Eastern Cape last year when ANC councillors attacked their opponents with glass jugs during a sitting .

In Joburg, council meetings have had to be postponed several times with the DA blaming the ANC for the meetings’ collapse.

Makhubela said the ANC always used April 6 as a day to commemorate Mahlangu.

“This council will not continue,” Makhubela said. He told Mathebe that the mayor could deliver hi s address any other day, just not on April 6.

ANC councillors marred yesterday’s council sitting by raising points of order that Mathebe said were actually points of debate.

“Honourable councillors, you’re intentionally disrupting the sitting,” Mathebe said before ordering them to leave.

But the ANC members would not budge, insisting on occupying their seats. A war of words erupted between security officials, including metro police, who had to force them out.

One official was called a “racist white b **** ” when trying to eject them. “Hang us like you did to Solomon Mahlangu,” one ANC female councillor screamed.

Before Msimanga walked into the chamber to deliver the address, the ANC councillors sang the banned Dubula ibhunu song. The Equality Court in Johannesburg ruled in 2010 that lyrics of the song constituted hate speech.

Msimanga finally delivered his address from a building in which ANC councillors were locked out. He lambasted them as a group of hooligans.

Hang us like you did to Solomon Mahlangu