A Matatiele Local Municipality Council today took a resolution to charge a Councillor deployed by Democratic Alliance for dragging Municipality into disrepute. Wonga Potwana who is also the Deputy Chairperson of the Democratic Alliance in Eastern Cape is accused of publishing Municipal Information to the public without Speaker’s consent. The motion of charging Cllr Potwana was raised by Chief Whip Sonwabile Mngenela and was supported by Cllr Bono. Cllr Kenneth Biggs who is also a DA Cllr in the same municipality opposed the motion saying that he has never heard of municipal information as a private matter. Cllr Mngenela based his motion on standing rules and Orders number 6,5,1 which prohibits ordinary Councillors to communicate with the media on behalf of the municipality without explicit approval from the Speaker. Two weeks ago Potwana wrote on his Facebook page that the municipality is planning a Jazz Festival for the December holidays.
According to him a three-day event which is planned to be from the 23 to the 26th is done despite the fact that a resolution was taken to postpone it because of Covid 19. The resolution said the budget for the festival must be rolled over to the cropping project. He again published a meeting where an R7m top-up to finish the construction of a council chamber was going to be discussed. According to him, there was no specification for that. In an interview, Potwana said it is clear that publishing this information did not go down well with ANC comrades. “It is also it has stopped people especially ANC leaders from benefitting from public funds wrongly, as a result, they are angry”, he said. He said they must bring the charges on. I m still going to publish the wrong things that they are doing. Why are they disregarding a council resolution and want to spend money without the public knowing, that’s mischief”, he concluded.
