The newly-elected deputy mayor of the City of Tshwane has been slammed for his outstanding municipal debt, while the EFF hit back at critics.
The DA has demanded newly-elected deputy mayor of the City of Tshwane Eugene Modise pay back his enormous municipal debt.
Modise is the chairperson of the African National Congress (ANC) in Tshwane and a recently-elected Member of the Mayoral Committee (MMC) for finance in the municipality.
His appointment as deputy mayor on Friday means mayor Dr Nasiphi Moya will now have to appoint a new MMC for Finance.
In his acceptance speech, Modise said he would not tolerate corruption, vandalism and wastage.
But opposition party the Democratic Alliance (DA) was quick to point out his personal debt to the City. That balance allegedly stood at around R690 000 on 31 March this year, but is now R620 000.
Tshwane deputy mayor urged to set example
In a special council meeting on Friday, the Democratic Alliance’s Jacqui Uys congratulated Modise on his election before saying the municipality’s credit control was crucial to its recovery.
Then Uys urged Modise to set an example for Tshwane and the credibility of its credit control campaign, by paying his own substantial debt.
She encouraged the deputy mayor to make a payment arrangement with the municipality, if needed.
To this, the EFF’s Obakeng Ramabodu, who is the newly-elected MMC of environment and agriculture management, raised a point of order.
He said Uys had taken advantage of the information available to her when she was MMC of finance to attack her replacement.
“This swart gevaar tendency, where they want to scare us… Apartheid tendency, it is a swart gevaar arrangement where they have information. They say ‘hey Modise! hey Modise! what is that?”
He became more vocal as he accused the DA of unscrupulously attacking the new deputy mayor.
“She must also visit Popi Act! She can’t come with some list of information. She must be called to order,” he shouted at the council.
“We are going to release the list of Brink, who is also owing,” Ramabodu alleged.
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Speaker intercedes, does not allow personal information to be shared
Speaker of Council Mncedi Ndzwanana stopped him there. Referring to a previous incident where a councillor’s personal debt was raised in council.
“I said I am not going to entertain the issue of disclosing personal information of any councillor in this house,” he said, drawing shouts of discontent from councillors.
“You can hound me as much as you can… It doesn’t matter how much you believe, you cannot disclose personal information [here]. We are [on] YouTube. We are in a public space.”
He said the DA needed to “do the right thing” and deal with the “personal matter” privately.
EFF and ANC councillors later argued in council they should be discussing service delivery rather than personal matters.
