Accountability demanded from President Ramaphosa, Ministers over Ditsobotla Municipality crisis

Sakeliga has informed President Cyril Ramaphosa and several of his ministers that it will seek personal cost orders against them – unless they urgently take direct responsibility for recovery of the collapsed Ditsobotla Local Municipality in the North West Province.

According to the organisation, the president and his national executive are in gross violation of their constitutional duties to resolve Ditsobotla’s implosion of water services, electricity provision, and basic administration. It has given the government until August 15 to provide written confirmation of the steps they are taking or intend to take to intervene.

Sakeliga has informed the premier of North West and his provincial executive that it will also be seeking personal cost orders against them if they do not immediately withdraw their opposition to Sakeliga’s litigation.

While this last cost order was not against them personally, Sakeliga will now ask the court to make this so if the Premier and his Provincial Executive do not now withdraw their opposition to the litigation.

In a recent judgment by the Mahikeng High Court, the judge said: “The respondents  were delaying the inevitable: trying to circumvent their constitutional duty to provide sufficient water to members of the public. The opposition of the application was, in my view, totally unnecessary.”

The current phase of the litigation by Sakeliga and its partners in Ditsobotla stems from a court order in October 2023. At the time, the court ordered provincial intervention at Ditsobotla because of ongoing and accelerated state failure in Lichtenburg, Coligny, Boikhutso, Blydeville and surrounding areas.

However, Sakeliga said, all attempts by the Provincial Executive government to rectify the situation have now failed and they have no prospects of future success.

“Our litigation therefore requests the court to order that the president and his cabinet should fix the collapsed Ditsobotla Local Municipality themselves, in terms of section 139(7) of the Constitution. This is the highest form of government intervention and final remedy that the Constitution explicitly provides for in cases of complete state failure, as in Ditsobotla,” Sakeliga said.

In their application, Sakeliga requests the court to declare that the president (as head of the National Executive), the cabinet as a whole, and certain cabinet members individually are acting unconstitutionally and unlawfully by not intervening with the Ditsobotla Local Municipality.

They are asking that the court order the president and his cabinet to take over all the responsibilities of intervention from the provincial government, and to, themselves, enforce and implement the approved municipal recovery plan.

Sakeliga said should the president and cabinet continue to fail in their duties, it would herald an unprecedented constitutional crisis.

“Without stabilisation of Ditsobotla and the multitude of other municipalities approaching similar collapse, the destabilisation of all the urban environments in South Africa – and therefore the country itself – is a substantial risk,” Sakeliga said.

zelda.venter@inl.co.za