ANC and DA trade barbs over City of Tshwane's cleaning levy

The Citizen

4 days ago

The DA accused the City of Tshwane of wasting taxpayers' money.
The City of Tshwane (CoT) used three advocates and hundreds of papers to argue, and lose, the cleaning levy case in the Pretoria High Court last Thursday. The court ruled that the fee was illegal and invalid.
AfriForum approached the court to set aside the metro's decision to impose a new mandatory monthly levy of R194.37 (excluding VAT) on approximately 260 000 households and businesses within the metro.
AfriForum argued that the levy amounted to illegal and unfair double taxation, especially in cases where residents do not benefit from the metro's refuse removal service and are forced to use private service providers, she said.
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Tshwane MMC accuses DA of introducing cleaning levy
However, the MMC for Environment and Agriculture Management, Obakeng Ramabodu, clapped back and said the City of Tshwane will appeal this judgment as it believes a cleaning levy, aimed at improving the maintenance of landfills, is necessary.
He also accused the DA of introducing the levy while it was running the city.
'Much has been made of this cleansing levy, and it must be noted that a cleansing levy is not unique to the City of Tshwane. A cleansing levy was introduced in Tshwane between 2016 and 2021 by the erstwhile government, which now claims to take exception to it,' he said.
DA accuses Tshwane of wasting taxpayers' money
DA Tshwane caucus leader, Cilliers Brink, said his party will write to the city manager to investigate the handling of the cleaning fee.
Brink said the judgment in the Pretoria High Court setting aside the cleaning levy revealed the extent to which Tshwane's ANC-led coalition is wasting taxpayers' money.
'AfriForum took the levy on review, and the judge was scoffing at the city's conduct of the case. Not only did the court point to the failure of the city to produce policy documents on which its defence was based, but [it] also criticised the overreach of the city in employing three advocates to argue the case and producing hundreds of pages of socially irrelevant documents,' he said.
Brink stated that the cost of every page and billable hour for the advocates was at the expense of the residents of Tshwane.
'The irony is that this money is spent to justify a levy which the city cannot even explain.
'In the paragraph, the judge even issues a warning to the city's legal representatives of the professional, ethical implications of pulling up such a bad case,' he added.
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Brink said when the levy was debated in council, the DA rejected the idea of such a levy as a way of filling the city's coffers.
'The same budget which raised the levy did not increase the allocation for city cleanings. The ANC-coalition didn't actually plan to spend the money on city cleansing,' he said.
Brink questioned the City of Tshwane's decision to appeal the court judgment on the cleaning levy.
'If the city's legal team could not even produce documents that the city relied on to defend the levy in court, it's unclear how they would sustain an appeal.'