Cape Town - It's official. Masizole Mnqasela is no longer speaker of the legislature or even a member of the House.
This comes after the DA wrote to the secretary of the legislature, advocate Romeo Adams, saying that Mnqasela’s membership of the party had “ceased”, in effect relieving Mnqasela of his role as an MPL.
Legislature spokesperson James Retief confirmed Mnqasela’s status and said Adams, in turn, had written to Mnqasela telling him the news.
“The secretary has sent correspondence to Mr Mnqasela to indicate the impact of the cessation of his membership of the political party that he represented in the (provincial parliament).”
One of the consequences of the legislature’s decision to cut ties with Mnqasela now that his party has dropped him is that the seven members of the staff of the Office of the Speaker will lose their jobs by the end of December.
In a letter that Mnqasela’s attorney, Frank Raymond, sent to the DA demanding his immediate reinstatement, he said Adams had given the staff members a 30-day notice of termination on Monday.
The letter said the staff had been traumatised by the events.
Meanwhile, Office of the Speaker spokesperson Sisonke Mlamla said: “On advice of counsel, this office will not make any comment on the matter at this stage.
“Accordingly, kindly make contact with Mr Frank Raymond, who is the legal representative of Mr Masizole Mnqasela.”
In the letter to the DA, Raymond wrote that the termination of Mnqasela’s party membership was “unlawful and of no force and effect” for violating the principles of natural justice.
The letter said that if the DA failed to retract or otherwise acknowledge that the so-called cessation of membership was void from the start, Mnqasela would be left with no choice but to approach the Western Cape High Court seeking a hearing “for appropriate interdictory and ancillary relief”.
Raymond said they would ask the court for an order allowing the confidential information to be filed with the court without becoming a matter of public record, so that Mnqasela could “demonstrate the reasonableness of his public statements”.
Raymond said this relief went “to the heart of the artificiality of the readmission process”, and said Mnqasela could not defend himself against the “false allegations of fraud and corruption levelled against him, in the public domain”.
The DA was given until 2pm on Tuesday to retract the termination. If this was not done, Mnqasela and Raymond were to seek an urgent hearing in the high court on Tuesday afternoon.
At the time of writing neither Mnqasela nor Raymond was responding to calls about whether they had gone to court yet.
DA spokesperson Richard Newton said all correspondence to do with the Mnqasela issue was being dealt with by the party’s federal executive (FedEx).