Africa-Press – South-Africa. COPE leaders Mosiuoa Lekota and Colleen Makhubele, who currently serves as speaker of the Joburg council, have been hauled before the Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg for “unfairly” removing a Tshwane councillor.
Lekota and Makhubele face a court application filed by Justice Thabang Sefanyetso, a former Tshwane councillor, whose membership remains under dispute.
Sefanyetso had initially made the news in March in Tshwane as the COPE councillor who replaced former mayor Murunwa Makwarela.
Makwarela was removed as a COPE member because of his insolvency status, which left his former party and himself embroiled in a political scandal.
When Sefanyetso was expected to take on the membership of the PR seat held by COPE in Tshwane, he was “unfairly” removed, he claimed in court papers filed at the Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg.
Sefanyetso said he was legally allowed to replace Makwarela.
In court papers, he accused Makhubele and Lekota of using an old criminal charge to question his public standing as a councillor.
Sefanyetso said he pleaded guilty to committing a road traffic offence in 1999, and he was given a sentence which carried a fine, which he paid.
He said this criminal conviction did not prevent him from performing his other duties, which included working as a police officer and a forensic investigator for Standard Bank and Nedbank.
He said he worked in the crime-fighting space until 2021 when he enrolled as a councillor.
Sefanyetso said that because his criminal conviction had not prevented him from holding a job, it was unfair that Makhubele and Lekota eliminated him from taking up his rightful position as a PR councillor.
“Several of my constitutionally guaranteed rights were infringed, including freedom of association and my fair trial and rights. Termination of my membership was malicious, arbitrary, dangerous, dictatorial, reprehensible and flouted the very party constitution,” Sefanyetso said.
The former COPE member said he wanted his membership reinstated and to be placed at the top of the PR councillor list and reselected as a Tshwane councillor.
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