Durban — Shallcross residents in the southwest of Durban have called on the DA’s ward 71 councillor Fatima Ismail to resign within seven days, after accusing her of going AWOL for 104 days.
A handful of residents, led by mainly ANC leaders and party activists, marched to the councillor’s office in the suburb’s mall, where they handed over a memorandum demanding she resign within seven days.
There was a bit of a drama when the councillor refused to sign the memorandum because part of the wording insisted that she resign, and she argued that if she signed, it would mean that she was agreeing to resign.
Metro and SAPS members had to intervene by asking march leaders to remove the resignation wording in the memorandum to avoid unnecessary disputes between marchers and the councillor. After their caucus, the marchers scratched out the resignation sentence and the councillor accepted the community’s grievances.
ANC local branch secretary Falakhe Mhlongo said the councillor had failed the community, so they were giving her seven days to step down, vowing to intensify their campaign until she was gone. He said she was last seen in the community on May 13, and on Thursday was her first appearance since then. He said she had been absent for 104 days.
“She failed to provide the community with water tankers during the various, prolonged water crises. She has also failed to provide us with any assistance when we experienced prolonged electricity outages,” said Mhlongo.
He added that even during the floods the councillor was nowhere to be found. He also accused her of running the ward with her family, because every time they called, family members would answer her phone.
But the councillor denied she had been absent, saying she had been sick after spending a night in the cold trying to assist residents with water tankers. About the services residents raised in the memorandum, she said the community was barking up the wrong tree.
DA MP Mergan Chetty said it would be a mistake to say that it was Shallcross residents who were unhappy with the councillor, but rather only a handful of ANC members who were still bitter that his party had snatched the ward from the ANC.
He said the fact that it was a group of people with ANC T-shirts showed it was not the Shallcross residents. Chetty also said it was wrong to blame the councillor for the plight of flood victims still trapped in the local hall, because it was the ANC government that placed them there, not the councillor.
“What these people marched for here was not about things to be done by councillors, but rather the eThekwini Municipality.”
Daily News