EN PASSANT

THE Constitutional Court delivered yet another eye-opening judgment on Thursday.

It ruled that the Speaker of Parliament does have the powers to institute a motion of no confidence in the president through a secret ballot. This is contrary to her initial view.

But there is nothing to celebrate here because we all know that she won’t allow a secret ballot. Even if she does, the opposition won’t get enough support from ANC MPs.

If the NEC of the ANC failed to remove Jacob Zuma, what makes them think a secret ballot will make any difference? ANC MPs are very loyal to their organisation and will never vote with the opposition, even those who publicly criticised Zuma.

Therefore, in a nutshell, there is nothing to celebrate. The whole exercise was just a waste of time and money. But then time will tell if this hollow victory will bear any fruits. Braamfontein “You can’t make race horses out of donkeys,” but many councils have installed inefficient and incompetent administrators, with no tendering pricing knowledge, who caused great harm regarding service delivery budgeting.

Basically, taxpayers were in the dark and major losers while billions were syphoned off with shady deals.

Furthermore, there are too many subcommittees and task teams doing little but bleeding the councils’ budgets.

The bottom line is that there is no supervision or controls and no proper systems in place so that the Auditor-General can crosscheck the finances of all councils daily.

Politicians’ inept capabilities of running councils is the major problem, whereas people with business acumen should be running the finances. Rustenburg and principals’ competencies. 4. In many schools, “less than half the official curriculum is covered by the end of the year”. 5. Teacher absenteeism.

The ANC government has had 23 years to rectify these problems and eradicate the “legacy of apartheid”, but has failed miserably. Fix these problems, and we will regain top educational status. Blaming apartheid won’t do it. Germiston