CoGTA Minister Thembi Nkadimeng says government is forging ahead with the reinforcement of the code of conduct for councillors in an effort to address challenges, strengthen local government and look into motions of no confidence.
The Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) Minister made the remarks on Wednesday when she was updating the media on the state of local government.
“In the past two weeks, we’ve put in the code of conduct for councillors …this was as the result of what happened in the City of Tshwane and in the City of eThekwini where councillors physically attacked one another instead of sitting and debating about disagreements,” she said.
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At the eThekwini council incident, the EFF had demanded city manager Musa Mbhele to leave the meeting following allegations that the city had failed to spend R1.9bn of a conditional grant allocated to repair infrastructure. Matters escalated when the EFF was requested by the speaker to leave the meeting if they didn’t behave.
The code of conduct, according to Nkadimeng, zooms into measures that need to be applied jointly with the council if disruptions are the order of the day.
The CoGTA Minister emphasized the government’s intentions to regulate on the motions of no confidence.
“There are critical areas on how they should come about, which are fraud, corruption and not providing service delivery. But it can’t be based on slight provocation, like not greeting and now you’re angry with party B,” she pointed out.
Moreover, she dismissed the notion that government was trying to micromanage councils. However, Nkadimeng said these interventions are driven by the desire to protect citizens.
According to the State of Local Government report, 64 municipalities were categorised as dysfunctional, 111 were at medium risk, 66 at low risk, and 16 deemed stable.
