The African National Congress parliamentary caucus has publicly backed the decision of the forum for the minister of housing and provincial housing ministers (Minmec) to remove the Democratic Alliance-led City of Cape Town from the N2 Gateway Housing Project ”with immediate effect”.
In a statement on Thursday, ANC MP Zoe Kota, who is chairperson of the ANC study group on housing, said: ”The city’s continued participation has ceased to add value to this crucial project, primarily because of the mischievous and divisive conduct of the executive mayor, Helen Zille.”
Minmec removed the city from the project on Monday.
He continued: ”It is unfortunate that since she took over the position of executive mayor, Zille has seen the city’s role in the project as nothing other than a forum for political point scoring.
”The executive mayor’s continued ranting and criticism of the state of the project in the media and her obvious show of disinterest in the project’s success are venomous to the smooth implementation process of the project.”
The ANC caucus said that most of the concerns that the mayor raised regarding the project could have been adequately addressed had they been raised in the meetings of the M-3 — which the national ruling movement said was a forum of the minister of housing, provincial ministers and mayors.
”Regrettably, the executive mayor has instead elected to stay away from the forum meetings and used her time to feed the media with ill-informed commentary on the project. The M-3 forum was established in terms of the Inter-Governmental Relations Act to improve corporate governance between different spheres of state.
”Zille’s perpetual snubbing of this important forum was therefore not only contemptuous of the M-3, but also seriously violated the provisions of the corporate government principles stipulated in the Act.
”We are appalled at the divisive role of the mayor regarding this project as it stood against the resolve by the national and provincial government to speedily meet the housing needs of the people of Cape Town,” the caucus said through Kota.
Zille has argued that the cost of each unit of the project was well in excess of the average Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) dwelling.
Zille told a local newspaper that she had not bypassed any process and had missed a May 31 meeting because it clashed with a council meeting at which an Independent Democrats motion to change the system of government was raised.
She said the media had gained access to information because her meetings under her multiparty government are held in the open ”and this is how democracy works”.
Zille noted that the management of the N2 Gateway was transferred from the council to the province in February — before the local council elections that saw the ANC lose power. Now the council sits with huge bills incurred by the former ANC administration, she charged. — I-Net Bridge