GOOD Statement by Jonathan Cupido, GOOD City of Cape Town Councillor & Caucus Whip:
Lawyers representing opposition parties in the City of Cape Town have written to the Speaker of Council, Felicity Purchase, to demand that the Council meeting scheduled for Thursday 21 August 2025 be held in-person in the Council Chambers.
If she does not accede to the demand, the parties will seek a court order compelling her to act within her powers and within the law.
Last week, Purchase issued a notice to councillors calling the meeting on an online meeting platform.
In a constitutional democracy the default position for meetings of representative bodies, like Councils, is that they must be held in-person, accessible and accommodating of the public.
Though inherently exclusionary of residents, so-called Virtual Meetings were an unavoidable exception to these rules during the Covid lockdown period. Purchase knows well that those conditions no longer prevail. Her agenda is to strangle open debate.
The GOOD Party tabled the Motion to Remove the Speaker on 6 August 2025, following a pattern of abuse of the Speaker’s powers with regards to the scheduling of Council meetings, the impartial application of the Rules of Order, and the use of enforcement officers to physically and violently remove Councillors from the Council Chamber.
Her scheduling the meeting virtually is another abuse of power. She not only wants to curtail proper debate on the motion, itself; she also seeks to avoid her office’s duty to make a rational and lawful decision with regards to the demand for the motion to be voted on by way of a secret ballot.
The Speaker must recuse herself from chairing the meeting when the motion is being debated.
Attorneys representing the GOOD Party and the ANC directed a letter to Purchase today demanding an undertaking that the meeting will be rescheduled to an in person meeting in the Council chamber – failing which the parties will seek a high court order compelling her to do so.
The parties are engaging other opposition parties to join the application in the interests of effective and normal democratic practices.
GOOD Manifesto on Social Cohesion: Fostering social cohesion and unity among diverse communities.
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