Nqutu municipality to hold new meeting to elect executive

Durban - The Nquthu Local Municipality is set to elect a mayor, deputy mayor and speaker for the second time after the Pietermaritzburg High Court ruled that the previous election was not valid, the KwaZulu-Natal department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs said on Thursday.

Durban - The Nquthu Local Municipality is set to elect a mayor, deputy mayor and speaker for the second time after the Pietermaritzburg High Court ruled that the previous election was not valid, the KwaZulu-Natal department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs said on Thursday.

“The MEC has noted and welcomed the court judgement declared the purported meeting to elect the Nquthu as null and void,” spokesperson Lennox Mabaso said in a statement. “The MEC urges all presiding officers in municipal councils to do everything according to the law and to ensure proper and correct communication to all parties concerned. The Nquthu council will sit tomorrow (Friday).”

Details of the court ruling were not immediately available. Speaking later by phone Mabaso said the application before court to have the inaugural meeting of the Nquthu Local Municipality had been brought by a political party, although he did not specify which party.

The municipality, which had previously been run by a coalition of the African National Congress and the National Freedom Party, saw the Inkatha Freedom Party emerge in the recent local government elections as the largest party with 15 seats - one more than that of the ANC. The NFP won two seats, while the Democratic Alliance and the Economic Freedom Fighters each won a seat.

The EFF and DA aligned themselves with the IFP and the NFP with the ANC. Mabaso said that the department had received complaints from councillors that there had been confusion over the meeting and whether it was going to take place at all. He said the department had requested more information from the municipal manager, who would have been the presiding officer prior to the election of the key office bearers, such as mayor, deputy mayor and speaker.

“There was a belief that the meeting had been postponed,” he said. While he would not say who brought the application to court, the IFP was openly critical of the Nomusa Dube-Ncube, the MEC for cooperative governance in the province.

The IFP's national chairman, Blessed Gwala, said: “The Inkatha Freedom Party in KwaZulu-Natal views the actions of the MEC for Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA), Nomsa Dube-Ncube as interference in democratic after she dissolved the Nquthu municipality and meddled unduly in the Abaqulusi and Jozini Municipalities.”

He urged voters to realise that the failure to start the business of governing in accordance with voters wishes was not of the IFP's doing.

“After the recent local government elections, the processes of establishing functional municipal councils are being frustrated and subverted by MEC Dube-Ncube. As a result of her actions she is depriving people of municipal services. The MEC is abusing her authority through undue interference,” he said.

African News Agency