The DA has rushed to court in an attempt to stop the suspension of Tshwane city manager Johann Mettler.
In papers filed at the high court in Pretoria this week, the DA’s Cilliers Brink asked the court to suspend the decision taken by the city council last week to place Mettler on precautionary suspension.
He asked the court to reinstate Mettler as city manager and block anyone from being appointed as acting city manager until the case has reached its final determination. Brink also wants the court to halt any planned disciplinary action against Mettler.
Mettler was suspended through a council vote on Thursday that adopted a report recommending his suspension over a wide range of allegations, including those made by mayor Nasiphi Moya that he presided over irregular and unlawful recruitment and appointment processes, and failed to conduct vetting and screening processes before the recruitments.
Mettler is also facing accusations that he exercised his administrative authority in an unlawful or arbitrary manner in some of the recruitment processes in question.
The DA, which was expected to vote against the report, had a large number of its councillors on leave. It sought to rescind the leave days at the 11th hour to attend the council sitting, but the speaker had the councillors marked as absent.
In his court papers Brink argued against the decision by the speaker to strike out votes cast by DA members who were supposedly on leave.
“The central complaint is short and incapable of serious dispute. After the councillors had cast their votes on each of the matters before the council, the first respondent, being the speaker, deducted 13 votes from the side that had voted against the outcome favoured by the governing coalition. He did so on every vote. By this means, the speaker reversed the result of the vote. He had no power in law to do any such thing,” Brink said.
He said his interest is not in whether the allegations made against Mettler have any merit and his only concern is the process that led to his suspension.
“This application is not concerned with the merits of the allegations against the city manager, Mr Mettler, or against the chief financial officer, Mr Gareth Mnisi. It is concerned with whether the council lawfully decided the questions before it lawfully suspended the city manager. It did not. The decisions were not the decisions of the council. They were the decisions of the speaker, substituted by him for those of the council through a device the law does not permit,” argued Brink.
He said the speaker thus acted unlawfully and exceeded his powers by unilaterally deducting or striking down the votes cast by the DA councillors. These powers, he argued, are not conferred on the speaker of council.
Brink said the rules and by-laws of the City of Tshwane council, specifically section 39 which deals with the method of voting, provide that every motion or proposal must be submitted to the speaker, who must inquire whether it is unopposed and, if it is opposed, must call on the members to indicate, in a manner determined by the speaker, the number of members who are for or against the motion or proposal, after which the speaker must declare the result of such voting.
“The power conferred on the speaker by section 39(1) is therefore a narrow and mechanical one. He must ascertain the number of members for the motion and the number against it, and he must declare the result. The result is the arithmetical outcome of the count. The speaker is not empowered to add to that count, to subtract from it, or to adjust it. The by-law confers no discretion of any kind on the speaker to alter the numbers the members produce when they vote.
“The only circumstance in which the by-law permits the speaker to affect the numerical outcome of a vote is provided for in section 39(3). That subsection provides that, where there is an equality of votes, the presiding councillor may exercise a casting vote in addition to his or her own vote as a councillor. This is the single instance in which the presiding officer may add to the tally, and it arises only on an equality. There was no equality of votes on any of the matters before the council on July 9 2026. Section 39(3) has no application and the speaker did not purport to rely on it. It confirms, however, that where the by-law intends the presiding officer to influence a numerical result, it says so expressly and confines the power narrowly.”
Brink argued that every councillor who is present in council during a vote is entitled to have their vote counted
“Nothing in the by-law empowers the speaker to exclude a councillor from voting, or to disregard a councillor’s vote, on the grounds the councillor had previously applied for leave of absence from the meeting.”
TimesLIVE
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