The Speaker of the NMMB Council, Jonathan Lawack, says he hopes common sense will prevail following a collapse of the 10 April 2018 council meeting.
The meeting collapsed for the second time in as many months, after chaos and disruptions ensued in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality (NMMB) council chamber.
Councillors were only able to offer their condolences to the late Winnie Madikizela-Mandela ahead of a scheduled no-confidence vote against the municipality’s mayor, Athol Trollip.
Lawack told Political Analysis South Africa on 11 April 2018 that he hoped the disruptions do not happen again.
“I’m hoping and praying that common sense will prevail because at the end of the day we have been elected by the voters to serve their needs.”
“If we fail in our mandate the voters will eventually not forget this…we are here as an administration to fulfil our mandate in serving the people to deliver good services to the people, to listen to them and to be a responsive government,” he said.
Lawack says the city’s councillors will now have to petition him to hold a special council meeting. Of the 120 councillors, 61 would have to sign the petition in order for the speaker to grant it.
However, Lawack believes it is unlikely that the opposition will get majority signatures in order to hold the special meeting. “If they put together all the opposition parties in our government then they get most likely to 59,” he said.
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) motion is aimed at ousting Trollip, and was brought by the party’s leader, Julius Malema, after he vowed to “punish” the Democratic Alliance (DA) after it rejected a motion on land expropriation without compensation at the National Assembly.
