The Democratic Alliance (DA) in Knysna on Monday tabled a motion to dissolve the Knysna Municipal Council and allow for fresh elections to be held in the municipality.

DA constituency head Knysna Ryan Smith said his party “considered every potential configuration” under the current Council make-up, and felt there was no pathway to a stable majority government for Knysna.

“The only way to rescue Knysna is for fresh elections to be held where a clear DA-majority can be elected that will no longer be vulnerable to instability as a result of the political opportunism and self-interest of unreliable coalition partners,” he added.

Smith said Knysna was too fragmented to elect a stable majority government under the current Council configuration.

He said the DA submitted its motion as “the only remedy” to the over-fragmentation of the current Council make-up, which he said had rendered it impossible to elect and sustain a stable majority government in the interests of Knysna residents.

He said the motion was intended to bring an end to the current African National Congress/Plaaslike Besorgde Inwoners/Patriotic Alliance/Economic Freedom Fighters coalition which the DA believed had ushered in the rapid “collapse of service delivery in Knysna, inflicting untold damage” on its residents and the surrounding environment.

“A dramatic drop in water quality and supply, electricity outages, the collapse of refuse removal and sewerage and wastewater management, have placed the very lives of Knysna’s residents at peril,” Smith said.

He pointed out that over the past weeks, the levels of E-coli in the Knysna lagoon had exponentially surpassed acceptable levels owing to the unchecked flow of raw sewerage into Knysna’s lagoon and estuary.

“With pollution levels so elevated, it is likely that Knysna will lose its blue flag status ahead of the 2024 high season, severely impacting the once thriving local tourism economy,” he explained.

Furthermore, Smith noted that the collapse of Knysna’s refuse removal services in December 2023 warranted a full-scale intervention by the DA-led provincial government to “rescue the municipality from drowning in its own rubbish”.

He attributed the challenges to “the incompetent, unqualified, and unsuitable appointments” made by the current coalition government since September 2022, which the DA had had successfully declared unlawful and reversed through successive court action.

Smith explained that the party has “done everything to constructively engage” the Mayor, municipal manager/s, and senior officials to ensure that Knysna is “salvaged from further collapse”.

Instead, he said efforts have been met with constant excuses of infrastructure collapse and sabotage, and no will or desire to action effective long-term plans to address the town’s rapid collapse.