Dangerous road to go down, says DA MP on Sandton Drive renaming. [Picture: Papi Morake/Gallo Images]
Should the City of Johannesburg rename Sandton Drive in honour of Leila Khaled, it will set the city on a dangerous path. This is according to Leah Potgieter MP of the Democratic Alliance (DA), whose party criticised the public participation process.
Speaking in an interview with Salaamedia recently, Potgieter said it appeared the controversial renaming was a done decision. Without due regard for public participation, she said, the city was not far off from unilateral decision-making.
“It sets a very dangerous precedent going forward, where governments just want to do what they feel like doing instead of getting the mandate from the people that they serve. Essentially, those people are who elected them into office,” she said.
She referred to utterances by officials suggesting that the decision had already been taken. For one, fraud accused community development MMC, Cllr Kabelo Gwamanda, remarked to that effect.
“Public participation is a mandatory process, but it would have been a decision that has already been taken,” he reportedly stated.
The DA has fiercely opposed the move that, if successful, would see one of Johannesburg’s important roads named after a Palestinian icon. It is calling for an independent audit of the approximately 100 000 submissions Gwamanda received, alleging a range of irregularities.
