ANC in bid to oust Mashaba
Gauteng ANC chairman Paul Mashatile plans to meet EFF leader Julius Malema to lobby the party to vote with the ANC in ousting Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba in its vote of no confidence.
Gauteng ANC chairman Paul Mashatile plans to meet EFF leader Julius Malema to lobby the party to vote with the ANC in ousting Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba in its vote of no confidence.
The ANC on Friday filed another motion of no confidence in the mayor as well as in speaker Vasco da Gama, after the previous motion it filed was not tabled by the city’s programming committee as it was deemed inadmissible.
Mashaba said the ANC’s motion lacked substance and was nothing more than a smoke screen by the ANC to regain the city — “something the electorate firmly denied them”.
He said he looked forward to debating the “frivolous motions” in the coming council meeting.
The ANC in Johannesburg had tabled the previous motions in a politically unstable time in which the EFF’s support in the metro was not a given. The turbulence followed an instruction from the EFF that its councillors should boycott coalition-led council meetings to teach the DA a lesson on how to treat minority parties in the coalition.
The EFF is not in any formal coalition but is a crucial voting partner to coalition-led governments such as Johannesburg and Tshwane. The party votes with the coalition on a case-tocase basis.
ANC Johannesburg spokesman Jolidee Matongo said: “They are not giving any assurance that they will vote against them, but they say, come let’s talk.”
No date has been set for the meeting but EFF spokesman Mbuyiseni Ndlozi said his party had agreed to the meeting.
“We do so particularly if they communicate directly with us and not the media about why they want to meet us. We don’t like to speak back to political actors through the media. So ANC, DA, IFP or even unions, if they want to meet us, they are free to do so for whatever reasons,” Ndlozi said.
Meanwhile, the Patriotic Alliance councillor in Nelson Mandela Bay, Marlon Daniels, has filed a notice of intention to table a motion of no confidence against Nelson Mandela Bay mayor Athol Trollip. The planned motion is seconded by the metro’s former deputy mayor, Mongameli Bobani of the United Democratic Movement, who was ousted by a motion of no confidence that was also tabled by Daniels.
The Patriotic Alliance and the coalition government entered into a working agreement in Nelson Mandela Bay, but it quickly turned sour after the position of deputy mayor, which the PA wanted, was not voted on in the council meeting following Bobani’s removal.
The Patriotic Alliance subsequently withdrew its support of the coalition in Nelson Mandela Bay.
A notice was also filed on a motion of no confidence in Nelson Mandela Bay speaker Jonathan Lawack.