Tshwane mayor Cilliers Brink wants to meet with council Speaker, Mncedi Ndzwanana, to deliberate on the importance of enforcing council rules in a bid to avoid the repeat of Thursday’s chaotic meeting.
This comes after the meeting collapsed and was subsequently called off by Ndzwanana after it descended into chaos over Brink's comment likening the ANC in power to “a hard-drinking person in charge of a bottle store”.
During the meeting at Tshwane House, the ANC wanted Brink to withdraw and apologise for the statement he made during a television interview last week.
Brink, however, refused to succumb to pressure to do so, saying: “I can only withdraw something that I have said in this meeting. I can not withdraw or debate things that I said outside of the council meeting. There is no basis for that.”
Councillors from ANC vowed to prevent him from speaking in council and repeatedly shouted in council that Brink was not going to address “drunkards”.
The EFF councillors also joined the fray in launching tirades against Brink for “disrespecting black people”.
Following the meeting, Brink went public to recount what happened in council, saying: “There were attempts by the ANC to prevent me from speaking (and) from tabling the reports. The (mayoral) reports were tabled but then essentially the Speaker called off the entire meeting because of what is clear to me was physical intimidation.”
He expressed worries about violence and hate speech rhetoric that transpired during the council meeting, saying it was never a good recipe for good political debate.
He also said there was no motion of no confidence against him after the ANC threatened to table it to remove as Tshwane mayor.
Regional ANC secretary George Matjila was said to be behind a move to table the motion against Brink because he was “upset” by new stringent rules governing the recently-awarded waste collection tender.
In terms of the rules, contractors are required to have trucks that are not older than nine years.
The trucks must be fitted with tracking devices and eNatis certificates to prove the roadworthiness of their vehicles.
Matjila has denied that he has business interest in the tender.
Regarding the council meeting, Brink said: “The council meeting was collapsed and what I will be doing is to meet with the Speaker as soon as I can to make sure that we apply the rules of council and finish council business.”
Pretoria News