By Luvuyo Mjekula
A two-year struggle to get their PR councillor jobs in the Makana Municipality council back culminated in victory for five Makana Citizens Front (MCF) councillors unlawfully dismissed in February 2022.
Lungile Mxube, Philip Machanick, Kungeka Mashiane, Jonathan Walton and Jane Bradshaw were reinstated as councillors in a special council meeting at the City Hall yesterday morning.
This after the Electoral Court ruled, on Monday this week, that the application for leave to appeal its May 2024 order to reinstate Mxube, Machanick, Mashiane, Walton and Bradshaw “has no reasonable prospects of success and is dismissed”.
This week, lawyer for the five, Brin Brody, of Wheeldon, Rushmere & Cole, wrote an urgent letter to the municipality’s legal team stating: “You will today receive the final order of the Electoral Court in Bloemfontein. There can now be no conceivable reason why our clients are not instated forthwith.”
“Should our clients not be instated by your municipality by close of business on 13 November 2024, our clients will bring urgent contempt of court proceedings against the senior officials of your client.”
They would also seek a personal costs order as further litigation would result to fruitless and wasteful expenditure in terms of the Municipal Finance Management Act.
This led to Mxube, Machanick and Mashiane being affirmed in an official swearing-in ceremony at the City Hall yesterday. Walton and Bradshaw were absent.
And the three left the City Hall in high spirits.
Mashiane was just as excited about returning to council. “I’m very glad to come back to the council because the people outside there, in Makana, they were suffering a lot. But now we are back in the council, we are going to fight because we promised the people of Makana [that]we are going to dissolve the corruption. We are going to fight for the voiceless [people]of Makana. We pledged to do that and we will continue to do that.”
The five were kicked out of the MCF by a rival party faction and replaced with Lungisa Sixaba, Thandisizwe Matebese, Amanda Deke, Zonwabele Mantla and Milo Geelbooi.
They challenged their dismissal in the Electoral Court, and in May this year, the Electoral Court ruled in their favour, reviewing and setting aside the decision to convene and conduct a disciplinary hearing at which it was decided to expel them in February 2022.
Despite declaring to be a law-abiding municipality that will never be in contempt of court, the Makana Municipality would not implement the court’s order or the Electoral Commission of South Africa’s (IEC) subsequent instruction to reinstate Mxube and his four fellow councillors and remove the incumbent five.
The municipality cited the five councillors’ application for leave to appeal the Electoral Court’s decision as the reason it did not implement the court’s order. Spokesperson Anele Mjekula at the time said an application for leave to appeal by the five councillors suspended the Electoral Court’s order.
Even a Makhanda High Court challenge to compel the municipality to execute the court order was unsuccessful, with the court sending the matter back to the Electoral Court.
Mxube and his four colleagues had asked the court to grant an order directing the municipality to register the five of them as councillors back dated to 12 April 2022.
They had further asked the court to interdict the municipality, council Speaker Matyumza and municipal manager Pumelelo Kate, from preventing the five of them from “exercising their constitutional rights as councillors” of Makana Municipality. The third relief sought by the applicants was for the three parties to pay the costs of the application. However, the matter was dismissed with costs.
The matter had brought controversy to the Makana council. At one point Speaker Matyumza summoned law enforcement officers to a special council meeting to remove Mxube, Machanick and Mashiane.
