“I want the blood of an Afrikaaner, I want to moer a boer,” screamed EFF Tshwane Regional leader Obakeng Ramabodu as he spoiled for a fight with Mayor Cilliers Brink in the chambers of the City of Tshwane Council on Thursday.
Ramabodu, like several ANC Councillors, demanded that Brink must apologise for the “racial remarks ” he allegedly made in a video which was circulated widely on social media recently.
In the video Brink asserts that allowing the ANC to govern Tshwane would be like putting a drunkard in charge of a bottle store.
Ramabodu was irked by the fact that besides mentioning the ANC in the said video, Brink also made mention of the EFF and according to Ramabodu that is an unprovoked attack as the EFF was not involved in bringing the much-publicised motion of no confidence against Brink.
Brink refused to apologies as demanded by the EFF and ANC, thus plunging the meeting into a long-drawn session of insults and counter insults accompanied by accusations of racism.
The Council meeting was eventually adjourned later in the afternoon without any of the scheduled agenda items being tackled.
In an interview with Tshwane Talks after the aborted meeting, Brink reiterated his stance that he won’t apologise for the “racial remarks” attributed to him by the EFF and the ANC.
“You can’t force somebody who has responded to an issue in the media to come and apologise for it in Council,” said Brink earnestly.
“We will not apologise for improving services in the City, we will not apologise for ensuring that contractors meet performance standards, we will not apologise for making sure that people are held accountable and if we are going to improve service delivery in the City of Tshwane, especially to the people in the townships, then we are going to have to make difficult decisions to hold people to account,” said Brink.
Brink pointed out that the insults levelled at him in Council were tantamount to hate speech and that in his political life it was the first time that he had heard such explicit and vicious instances of hate speech, and said it was regrettable that the Speaker didn’t discourage it.
Meanwhile, ANC Greater Tshwane caucus spokesperson Councillor Joel Masilela announced that his caucus was withdrawing the much-anticipated motion of no confidence in Mayor Brink. ”
“We have been advised by the leadership of the ANC in the province to withdraw the motion of no confidence in the DA-led Coalition government whilst the leadership is having consultative engagements within the structures of the ANC and at a later stage we will then be advised accordingly to then process the said motion against the failed state which has not provided our people with services in the last eight years and continues to intimidate even the speaker of Council by shelving the ward committee process, because they know that they would have lost a grip on power in this process which deepens democracy in our communities,” he said.
Masilela revealed that the ward committee process has been delayed for up to ten years now by the DA-led Coalition government in the City of Tshwane.
“We remain steadfast in our conviction that the Coalition government will eventually have to leave office due to its incompetence, said Masilela.
The earlier announcement of a motion of no confidence in Brink by the ANC is what had led Brink to remark that putting the ANC in charge of the City of Tshwane was akin to putting a drunkard in charge of a bottle store.