STATEMENT BY BRETT HERRON, GOOD MEMBER OF THE WESTERN CAPE PROVINCIAL LEGISLATURE & GOOD SECRETARY-GENERAL
GOOD ASKS MINISTER DLAMINI-ZUMA TO INTERVENE IN CAPE TOWN’S REFUSAL TO ANSWER PARLIAMENTARY QUESTIONS
31 May 2021
GOOD members picketed outside the Cape Town Civic Centre today carrying placards with questions that the municipality has refused to answer in the Provincial Legislature.
At the same time, GOOD Secretary-General Brett Herron, wrote to national Minister of Cooperative Governance Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma requesting her intervention.
Research conducted by GOOD into parliamentary questions asked in the National Assembly and Provincial Legislatures over the past two years indicates that DA-led Cape Town is the only municipality in the country that refuses to provide answers.
Most of the questions Herron has asked Western Cape Cooperarive Government MEC Anton Bredell about Cape Town over the past six months were questions posed by community members.
They span a variety of issues from service delivery to corruption.
But for six months Bredell has offered a standard response on behalf of the City to the effect that it is not answerable to other spheres of government.
In his letter to Dlamini-Zuma, Herron wrote he did not believe that the law intended municipalities to fall outside parliamentary scrutiny. All government functions should be subject to parliamentary scrutiny through questions.
“I am urging the Minister to urgently clarify whether the attitude adopted by the MEC for Local Government in the Western Cape, and the City of Cape Town, is correct, and if so to commence
the process to amend the legislation so that no entity of the state can avoid accountability,
transparency and scrutiny,” Herron wrote.
It is common practise in South Africa for MPs and MPLs to ask questions for written reply of the Co-Operative Governance Minister or MECs relating to municipalities.
The majority of these questions have historically been asked by DA members, but where the DA governs it refuses to submit itself to accountability.
If Cape Town (supported by Bredell) holds its line that the it is only answerable to itself, municipalities across the country will undoubtedly follow suit, killing the principles of transparency and accountability.
The DA appears to believe that it has a free ticket to manage the regions it governs with impunity because it is not the ANC. But recent events, including the arrest of Cape Town councillor Nora Grosse for fraud and money laundering, indicate that the DA and ANC suffer similar integrity afflictions.
Approximately 50 GOOD members participated in today’s demonstration.
Ends…