Political melt-down? Mokopane

According to Smit’s letter, mayor Esther Mothibi and her allies are pressing ahead with their efforts to oust the current municipal manager (MM), William Kekana, through costly legal action despite written instructions from the Provincial MEC for local government and housing to do the opposite.
Smit writes the following:
“In the last week the pot started boiling on the ANC Councillors lead by the mayor Esther Mothibi as the MEC for Local government and housing Soviet Lekganyane wrote the mayor a letter with three specific instructions with a 14-day deadline;
To implement the findings and proposals of the disciplinary committee against Adv. Thobejane who was found guilty on 26 charges during his hearing;
To cancel a illegal contract between the mayor and a security company as the mayor does not have the authority to sign contracts on behalf of the municipality (only the MM may) and follow correct procurement processes;
To stop any further actions to try and cancel the MM William Kekana’s contract earlier through the high court as the labour act protects him and it will lead to irregular and wasteful expenditure.
After receiving this letter from the MEC the mayor and four other ANC executive committee councillors continued to try and axe the MM through a special exco meeting with only one item on the agenda; to authorise the mayor to act on behalf of the Municipality to appoint a legal team to go to the high court to revoke the contract of the MM Kekana (this is again an illegal action as the mayor may not appoint service providers on behalf of the municipality).
When I asked the mayor about the instructions by the MEC, she and councilor Montane replied; “We do not take instructions from the MEC and we are not afraid of him, this is our municipality and we will run it.”
This meeting with only one [agenda] item took us three hours to conduct which ended with a vote (five against and four for the recommendation to proceed with actions. The mayor then added her vote to the four that made it equal and used her ‘executive power’ as she called it to push it through).
It is speculated that this group of five want to sack the  MM to make space for adv. Thobejane to take over [the position of] MM.”

* Please note this is an open letter by a local politician and while much of it can be substantiated as fact, some comments are simply his opinion. Northern News invites any political party to present us with their views on this issue. - Editor.