Muzila�s �lacklustre� speech causes chaos
Lebogang Mosikare | Tuesday May 30, 2017 16:12
The chaos started when the BDP councillor for Kanana ward, Cornelius Gopolang described the address by the city mayor Sylvia Muzila as lacklustre.
Gopolang said Muzila’s speech did not talk about “a myriad of problems that are affecting the city.
“Your speech is not enough and did not address many problems that are affecting the people of Francistown. Your speech should be aligned with the city’s vision of 2022. You omitted to talk about the Francistown Investment Company which is a vehicle for driving the city’s growth,” Gopolang said. He added that during the current tough times, the city needed visionary leadership to drive its development agenda.
Gopolang fell short of saying the current council leadership led by Muzila lacked visionary leadership skills, hence many problems affecting the people of Francistown remained unsolved.
This clearly did not go down well with Muzila who bluntly shot back, telling Gopolang that he was personally attacking her and was hence out of order.
In heated exchange of words that encued, Gopolang retorted that she should behaved like a political leader as she was the one who was out of order.
Trying to cool down tempers, which had clearly reached fever pitch between the two BDP councillors, specially elected councillor Andy Boatile told Gopolang to stick to what the mayor said and not attack her.
Gopolang said he was within his rights to tell the mayor what her speech did not talk about.
“Let us address issues seriously. We are politicians because if we don’t have political leadership we are going to lose elections. Criticism should not be taken negatively. Your speech was just addressing administrative issues. This is time for quality political leadership,” Gopolang said.
In response, Muzila reiterated what she earlier on said that Gopolang was not responding to her speech, but was personally attacking her.
She said: “You are personally attacking me and you are completely out of order. I beg you to sit down because you are out of order”.
The fiery exchange did not go down well with nominated councillor, Peter Ngoma.
The former mayor said it was his first time to hear that councillors should strictly talk about what the mayor said in her speech, but not alert the council about what the mayor’s speech may have omitted.