Provincial minister for local government and housing in the Western Cape, Richard Dyantyi, has turned down the city’s invitation to address the full Cape Town city council on Wednesday, according to a statement from Mayor Helen Zille’s office on Tuesday.
Zille said at such a meeting he would have had the opportunity to provide councillors with substantive reasons for his proposed change of the system of governance in Cape Town from an executive mayoral to an executive committee system.
Zille, who is leading a march through the city to Dyantyi’s offices on Thursday — in protest against the African National Congress move to divest her multiparty city government of its power — said she had written to the provincial minister “to request that he furnish us with reasons or withdraw his consultation period” over the proposed change.
“Failing this, the multiparty government of Cape Town will seek a mandate at tomorrow’s council meeting to declare an intergovernmental dispute with the provincial government.”
In a letter to Dyantyi on Tuesday, the mayor said: “Receipt is acknowledged of your telefax of October 19 2006. It is with dismay that I note that your latest telefax still does not provide the municipality with adequate reasons for your motivation for the proposed change in type of municipality, despite my previous telefaxes to you of September 22 2006 and September 29 2006.
“In these circumstances, I am once again obliged to point out that, without in any way conceding that you are entitled to determine a priori, a limit on the time to be afforded for the process of consultation, such period cannot, even on the proposed extended basis, be regarded as having commenced until, at the very least, you equip the municipality with the basis upon which you considered your proposed change of municipality type.
“In this circumstance, unless I receive, by written reply, your confirmation that the stipulation of the 44-day period is withdrawn, I shall have no alternative but to seek the council’s authority to formally take the appropriate action to protect the municipality’s interests in this respect.
“As I have previously pointed out, this would entail in the first instance having to declare an intergovernmental dispute in terms of the Intergovernmental Relations Framework Act 13 of 2005.” — I-Net Bridge