DuncanDuBoisNov19

Councillor's Corner

WARD COMMITTEE ELECTION MEETING STILLBORN

The November 18 meeting of registered voters in Ward 66 - the Bluff, Clairwood and Lower Seaview - to
elect a ward committee in terms of the Municipal Structures Act failed to realise the necessary quorum of
100 and had to be abandoned.

' Despite allowing for an additional 30 minutes of time, by 2.30pm only some 62 eligible voters had
assembled in the Assegai Hall in Wentworth for the purpose of electing a ward committee for ward 66, so
the meeting was called off by the IEC officials,' said ward councillor Duncan Du Bois. ' The exercise will be
re-run at a date to be announced early in the new year,' he said.

' Whilst one appreciates the fact that 62 people took the trouble to turn up on a rainy Saturday afternoon, this
exercise lends itself to abuse in that people can be bussed in purely to make up numbers. In the event that
through such means a quorum is attained, the immediate problem that arises is that of representivity. The
rules regulating the establishment and operation of ward committees are quite explicit in respect of
demographic representivity and special interest groups. In that the exercise is dependent on volunteerism
it risks defaulting on its own rules,' said Du Bois.

' The second reality that needs to be taken into account is the fact that attendance at Community Policing
Forum (CPF) meetings, certainly in ward 66, is generally very poor. If people do not take the trouble to attend
meetings concerning the biggest problem this country faces, namely, crime, then it strikes me as naive to
expect then to turn up to inaugurate a ward committee which, unlike a CPF, has no power at all.
I have no problem with the concept of the ward committee but considering the fickle nature of people I have
reservations as to how the criteria of establishment can be correctly satisfied.'

' After all, the idea of ward committees is to afford interest groups a platform of input into the local
government process. But if, as a result of apathy and indifference, that platform is hijacked by a single
interest group through bussing then, in my view, the end result is stillborn because it runs counter to the
terms of the Municipal Structures Act,' said Cllr Du Bois.

' In two respects the ward committee exercise is fundamentally flawed: In the first place public participation
cannot be made mandatory.
Secondly, whatever the composition of a ward committee and whatever its recommendations might be, the
mandate the ward councillor received through his election cannot be overturned or superseded. Put simply,
given the limitations of the ward committee concept, it cannot be seen as a substitute for or in any way more
significant than the voluntary organs and pressure groups of civil society,' said Du Bois.

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Issued by Cllr D L Du Bois