Related Content Meeting to elect mayor postponed Sick note floors Eden District Council’s ‘coup plot’

THE Eden District council meeting tomorrow is set to see heads roll if the ANC motions to remove the deputy mayor and speaker are adopted.

In letters on March 16 to municipal manager Godfrey Louw, ANC chief whip Piet van der Hoven gave notice of his intention to have Independent Democratics deputy mayor Jurie Harmse and Democratic Alliance speaker Johannes Bouwer removed from office.

The council meeting, which was postponed from last week, is being held to elect a new mayor to replace Rudi Laws, who earlier this month resigned from the DA.

Yesterday however, Van der Hoven would not comment on the reason for the motions, saying the media would have to “wait and see”.

After the council meeting was postponed for the second time last week, apparently due to an operational breakdown, the ANC complained that the delay was a deliberate ploy by the DA to give the ruling party time to agree with its coalition partners on a mayoral candidate.

Louw said there was no ulterior motive. An operations problem had resulted in having to retype and print amended pages, a total of 600 pages.

“The ANC complaint was more likely to deflect attention away from the items they submitted,” Louw said.

Trouble has been brewing at Eden since the beginning of the year when a motion of no confidence against Laws was hastily withdrawn from the council agenda on January 29 after one of the key role players was unable to attend due to illness. It is claimed that the ANC has been talking to the DA‘s coalition partners since December.

A source, who did not want to be named, said the ANC had been in secret talks with the National People‘s Party (NPP), Eden Forum and the Independent Civic Organisation of SA (Icosa) in the hope of getting 16 signatures enabling them to topple the DA coalition.

The coalition party is made up of the DA with 11 seats, the ID (two seats) and the Eden Forum, ACDP and NPP with one seat each. The ANC has 13 seats, and Icosa, which was ousted from the DA alliance during the Petrus Roodtman fraud case, is in the crossbenches.

Roodtman is to stand trial for fraud after being accused of inflating his travel claims. He has been dismissed from council and his place has been filled by advocate Fareed Stemmet.

ANC councillor Stephan de Vries said at the time that the party could introduce a motion of no confidence at a later stage as the ANC believed that the council was not functioning properly.