The embattled Letsemeng Local Municipality council in the Free State’s Xhariep district were to deliberate over its predicament in a council meeting today following the lost legal dispute against Eskom in the Constitutional Court. The municipality’s legal team was set to be part of a discussion on the unfavourable judgement at the municipality’s headquarters in Koffiefontein.
According to informed sources, the meeting followed mounting pressure from the public and opposition political parties on the mayor, Bonolo Mocwaledi, to explain the predicament arising from the loss with cost in the Constitutional Court. Judgment was handed down on Thursday (06/07), upholding the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) judgement on 14 March in favour of Eskom.
The power supplier successfully appealed in the SCA against the Free State High Court granting Letsemeng an interdict preventing Eskom from cutting electricity supply on 25 February 2020. Eskom felt aggrieved by the Free State High Court decision, basing the municipality’s reputation of defaulting payments on its overdue account. It also argued the municipality repeatedly breached the Intergovernmental Relations Framework (IRF) agreement signed with Eskom.
The Constitutional Court judgements compels the cash-strapped municipality to pay legal cost, as well as its overdue account, which was at the centre of the bitter legal dispute heard in the different three courts since 2020.
As per order of the court, in the majority judgment in SCA, the R5 million which the municipality received from the Free State Treasury for the payment of electricity debt must be paid to over to Eskom.
Judge Clive Plasket of the SCA said the in the judgment relating to the Letsemeng Municipality authority: “Letsemeng has behaved disgracefully throughout. Its duplicity and dishonesty has been brazen. If it had acted honestly and in good faith, it would have reported its delinquency to the provincial executive as far back as 2017, and steps could then have been taken by the latter to step into the administrative vacuum and repair the damage at a relatively early stage. An honest, constitutionally respectful municipal administration would have done the decent thing, and fallen on its sword.”
