MPHO Phalatse may have settled back into her office as Joburg mayor, but she has one foot out the door as another motion to remove her is looming.
This is despite another motion to remove her this week, which was withdrawn by the speaker of the council, Colleen Makhubele.
Addressing the media before the council meeting, Phalatse said: “While we have staved off another motion of no confidence, which failed to take off due to its legal inadmissibility before council, we are aware that another such motion is already being cooked up.
“Over the last two months, Joburg, the country and the world have seen the removal of the Speaker of Council, Councillor Vasco Da Gama, in a process that was characterised by very serious allegations of vote-buying, which was reported to the South African Police Service for investigation.”
The ANC in Joburg had previously called on the DA multi-party coalition to provide proof of that effect.
The case was opened at the Hillbrow Police Station in September this year.
The mayor also criticised the administration of Dada Morero, who was in office for nearly a month before the court ruling saw him vacate office.
“The multi-party government is not claiming to have done a perfect job, but we had only just begun. With that said, in the less than 30 days that the illegally elected government was in office, we began to see and hear of the tearing down, bit-by-bit, of the foundations and structures of good governance and the effects thereof that we had established.”
Not holding back, Phalatse didn’t spare Morero’s idea that every yard in Joburg should have a Jojo tank as part of addressing the water challenges in the city.
She said: “Faced with a water crisis and short on ideas, the response from the illegally installed corrupt collective was to lay blame on residents, with the solution being putting a JoJo tank in every yard.
“Years and years of corruption and the collapse of economic and critical infrastructure cannot be fixed with weak and unbudgeted programmes.
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“The already set out budget of the multi-party government has allocated R795 million to water supply infrastructure, and an additional R600 million for sanitation infrastructure. Many of these projects are on the go, and we will see completion between 2023 and 2024. Some storage and distribution projects were delayed because the scope of the projects had to change to accommodate the inclusion of backup power generation.”
