Brink accused the city of double standards in applying credit control, citing unpaid millions while households and schools face power cuts.
Former DA City of Tshwane mayor Cilliers Brink has challenged the city’s mayor, Nasiphi Moya, and her coalition partners not to appeal the cleansing levy judgment and bring a new funding plan to the municipal council with a set of measures on how to close Tshwane’s budget deficit.
Brink has also challenged Moya to lead a Tshwane ya Tima disconnection team to Mzansi Resort in Mabopane, north of Pretoria, and apply the credit control policies that apply to Tshwane residents.
‘Stop fronting’
“If deputy mayor Eugene Modise cannot get his company to pay what he owes the municipality, he must be fired as finance MMC,” he said.
Brink said Modise’s R23 million bill on Mzansi Resort was still not paid and that credit control has still not been done on the property, despite Moya leading Tshwane credit control teams to cut the power supply to schools, businesses and, recently, at the Tshwane University of Technology.
“It is time for the mayor to stop fronting for the ANC and to end the double standards which apply to billing and credit control in Tshwane,” he said.
Legal flaws in the cleansing levy
Brink said the policy of the ANC and its coalition partners has been to make life and work in Tshwane significantly more expensive.
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“When the cleansing levy was challenged in court, Tshwane could not explain whether it was a tax, a surcharge, or a tariff,” he said.
“It also could not counter the argument that the charge constituted a form of double taxation. Reading the judgment, it is clear that the city could not even produce basic documents in support of the legality of a separate cleansing levy in addition to a waste collection charge.
“The court was scathing about the city’s handling of the case, even citing the professional conduct of the legal team.
“The court ordered the levy to be reversed and existing payments to be credited to customer accounts.”
Brink said by the end of this month, Tshwane would again bill residents the city cleansing levy and restore previous charges of the levy, which had been reversed by the court order.
“This despite the fact that there is currently no appeal to the judgment of the High Court in Pretoria and, therefore, no legal excuse to escape the order of the court,” he said.
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Brink has urged residents to file a dispute against the city, which the city manager will have to address.
Residents’ frustration with costs
Pretoria East resident Monique Visser said she was looking for a new place to stay after her landlord decided to include the city’s new cleansing levy in her rent increase.
“I tried to explain to him that the court ruled it illegal and that it was not fair for him, as the property owner, to force the cost down to me as the tenant, but he did not want to listen. Now I am at a crossroads,” she said.
Visser said her rent was initially increasing by only R500, but the landlord has added an additional R200 to her bill.
“On the one hand, I am considering moving out, just to prove a point. But on the other hand, is it worth the trouble moving out over R200?” she said.
The City of Tshwane had not replied to The Citizen’s queries by the time of publication.
Moya referred the queries to Modise, whose spokesperson Nomfundo Mkhize said the city’s MMC for environment and agriculture, Obakeng Ramabodu, would comment on the matter.
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