The Sunday News
Vusumuzi Dube, Municipal Reporter
THERE was drama in the council chambers last Wednesday as councillors pushed for the ouster of council committee chairpersons said to be aligned to suspended Deputy Mayor, Councillor Gift Banda.
The motion had to be withdrawn from the main agenda, with the Mayor, Councillor Martin Moyo alleging that the Town Clerk, Mr Christopher Dube had some “advice” which he wanted to give before councillors deliberated on the matter.
However, council sources revealed that when the matter was discussed during the private council in-committee meeting, councillors blasted Mr Dube for trying to protect the committee chairpersons, who were responsible for him landing the council’s top job.
The five committee chairpersons constitute council’s general purposes committee, which interviewed and eventually employed Mr Dube a couple of months ago.
The current committee chairpersons are councillors Mlandu Ncube (Finance and Development Committee), Siboniso Khumalo (Future Water Supplies and Water Action Committee), Thabita Ngwenya (Health, Housing and Education Committee), Silas Chigora (Environmental Management and Engineering Services Committee) and Clr Thobani Ncube (Town Lands and Planning committee).
So tense was the matter that Clr Chigora of ward four attempted to throw out Clr Collet Ndhlovu for “inappropriate” dressing. Clr Ndhlovu is said to be leading the faction that wants the ouster of the chairpersons.
When the matter was eventually deferred to council in-committee, Clr Ndhlovu led his faction in jeering and accusing both Mr Dube and their colleagues of being cowards.
Contacted for comment, Clr Moyo confirmed that eventually the motion to push for the ouster of the chairpersons was passed after a vote, which saw 16 councillors voting for the motion and 10 voting against.
“What I can confirm for now is that everything is now in place pertaining the changing of committees and their chairpersons, the motion was passed during the council in-committee meeting.
“As it stands councillors are submitting the names of the committees they would want to be part of, after which we will then have a special council meeting to endorse those names. This is done so that in January during their first meeting they can then elect their new chairpersons,” said the mayor.
Questioned on the alleged divisions within council chambers, Clr Moyo could neither confirm nor deny these allegations claiming that what was essential was service delivery.
“As for that matter I can neither confirm nor deny, maybe in the background but on the surface I must emphasise that we all know that as councillors all that is essential is doing what we were elected to do, this being pushing for satisfactory service delivery,” said Clr Moyo.
According to the latest council report, the motion to rotate the committees and strip the current chairpersons of their powers was moved by ward 16 councillor, Clr Nephat Sibanda.
“I Councillor Nephat Sibanda of ward 16 hereby move a motion to change committees with effect from the 1st of December 2016. The move will give councillors the freedom of moving from the committees where they feel they have learned enough and to other committees.
“It should be noted that Standing Committees of Council were appointed in terms of section 96(1) of the Urban Councils Act (Chapter 29:15) hereinafter referred to as the Act. Section 96(8) of the Act provided that at every meeting referred to in subsection (1) of section 103 of the Act, a Council which had appointed standing committees could review the work of each standing committee during the previous year and shall reappoint such standing committees or appoint different standing committees in terms of subsection (1),” read part of the council minutes.
Council sources have, however, revealed that the latest move was aimed at weakening Clr Banda’s faction, which was said to have been running council like a personal business venture.
“If you note, all the current committee chairpersons were elected as per their allegiance to the suspended deputy mayor, so now councillors are taking advantage of his suspension to purge his close lieutenants.
“On the other hand councillors accused the town clerk of trying to protect the chairpersons probably as a thank you for giving him the job because when we got into council in-committee all he was saying was that we let the chairpersons stay, which councillors led by Collet (Ndhlovu) immediately shot down,” said the source.
According to Urban Councils Act Section 103, council can rotate council committees every August but this has not happened at the Bulawayo City Council since 2009. In the previous council the then Local Government, Public Works and National Housing Minister, Dr Ignatius Chombo had to intervene to calm the storm after councillors were again at each other’s throats over committee chairpersons’ positions.
In 2014, when a number of councillors defected to the then MDC Renewal team, ward two councillor; Sithabile Mataka penned a similar motion where she called on council to change council committees, including chairpersons of committees, mayor and deputy mayor.
“I have found it to be fair that council committee (sic) should change so that all councillors of the city could be afforded the opportunity to know how council operate (sic) through its committees. As a ward councillor one is not restricted to one or two fields but to all departments. So by changing committees, we will be getting exposure to all departments of council and that gives us experience.
“There are so many benefits that goes with the changing of committees as was indicated by other councillors which I real (sic) consider to be important,” wrote Clr Mataka.
