After the onerous nomination process that was concluded last month for potential ward committee members the City of Tshwane is set to conduct the election in the last two weeks of July.
This was according to the office of council Speaker Mncedi Ndzwanana, who said names of the qualifying nominees for ward committee elections have already been published on the City public website and social media pages.
The next step, he said, would be the appeals and objections process allowing people to raise issues with the list by sending them to [email protected] before Saturday.
Ndzwanana is expected to hear reasons as to why nominees were accepted or rejected next week on Monday and Tuesday and would communicate his decision on July 3.
He said the nomination process was completed on May 3 and it involved a meticulous procedure starting with the consolidation of data into a master spreadsheet.
“The office of the Speaker then conducted a thorough information checking process to ensure compliance with the submission requirements,” he said.
He said upon completion of the process his office compiled a report and requested the services of the auditing team to perform an additional verification check.
“This audit was conducted according to specific terms of reference, which included verifying and validating the eligibility of nominees against the established criteria set forth by the Office of the Speaker and the independent electoral management body,” Ndzwanana said.
The process to reintroduce ward committees in Tshwane will be made after 10 years since the structures have been inactive.
In 2014 the High Court in Pretoria nullified Tshwane ward committee elections that took place in 2012 after a court challenge by the DA questioning the constitutionality of the elections on the grounds that they excluded the participation of public members.
The City’s process for correcting the unconstitutionality of the by-law have been delayed on several occasions.
The late council Speaker Dr Murunwa Makwarela promised that the process for nominating and electing ward committees would start in 2023, but that never materialised.
Pretoria News