Sakeliga takes CR & Cabinet to court to halt destabilisation from failing municipalities…

Business organisation Sakeliga is seeking a court order to force President Cyril Ramaphosa and his cabinet to take direct responsibility for the recovery of a failing municipality. If the court order is granted, power and water must be restored within 30 days and the intervention cannot not stop until the rest of the recovery plan has been successfully executed. In this interview with BizNews, Sakeliga CEO Piet Le Roux explains why this court case would help to lay the foundation for stabilisation and alternative solutions to municipal collapse in the countryside. Should the national executive fail, Sakeliga will ask for new relief under article 172 of the Constitution to restore order in the affected towns: “And I think the people of towns across this country will seize on that new legal terrain to develop the jurisprudence by which businesses and communities themselves must intervene because we cannot sit idly by and let towns go to waste and people's lives be in danger just because the state fails in doing what it should.” With up to 70% of municipalities possibly not going concerns, Le Roux warns: “…if we don't find ways to legitimise and develop recognition and legal protection for communities and businesses to intervene when national executive, the president, the cabinet themselves, fail to do what they should do, we face a destabilised country.”