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Dear Mr Maimane

Nelson Mandela Bay coalition: Mistakes were made regarding the manner in which the speaker of council conducted the NMBMM council meeting of 24 August 2017

I refer to the matter of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality (NMBMM) Council meeting of 24 August 2017 at which a motion of no confidence was instituted by the Patriotic Alliance (PA), against our Deputy Executive Mayor, Cllr Mongameli Bobani.

The United Democratic Movement’s (UDM) lawyers have secured the closed-circuit television recording (available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzwt1-3KK09fRElhN0kzblVtT2s/view?usp=drive_web) of the aforementioned meeting from the Municipality.

I now wish to draw your attention to the meeting we had on 17 September 2017 when we talked about the state of the coalition. During our conversation, you conceded that the Democratic Alliance (DA) had made mistakes in dealing with the coalition partners and you had committed to set right such mistakes.

After having watched the recording today, I wonder if, when you referred to mistakes the DA had made, did you include the way the DA had handled the ousting of Cllr Bobani?

The UDM would like to understand how the Speaker of Council (as seen in the recording), in the very first instance only allowed one person of each political party to speak on the item and then ignored speaker, after speaker, who protested this decision. The DA professes to be proponents of democracy, but we fail to understand how, what happened on that fateful day, could be considered democracy.

When a councillor asked that the proposer of the motion, Cllr Marlon Daniels of the PA, explain what he meant by Cllr Bobani’s “erratic behaviour”, he never did. It appears as if this matter was just steamrolled through Council to suit a hidden agenda. We now know what that agenda had been, after we heard why the PA withdrew from your separate and bilateral “coalition agreement”.

Sir, do you consider the handling of the Council meeting as one of the mistakes the DA had made? Are you prepared to rectify this mistake by immediately reinstating Cllr Bobani as Deputy Executive Mayor?

Yours truly
Mr Bantu Holomisa, MP
President of the United Democratic Movement

Copied to:

Rev Kenneth Meshoe, MP
President, African Christian Democratic Party

Mr Mosiuoa Lekota, MP
President, Congress of the People

Dr Pieter Groenewald, MP
Leader, Freedom Front Plus

Issued by UDM