Smaller parties give Trollip a lifeline

Unless something unexpected happens on Thursday, it would seem that the DA’s Athol Trollip will survive the vote of no confidence in his leadership of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality.

Frantic last-minute political manoeuvring in the metro saw the DA confirming the support of the Patriotic Alliance (PA) on Wednesday at a rally.

Sources said the PA had demanded, and got, the reinstatement of the deputy mayor’s position, which was frozen after Trollip fell out with the United Democratic Movement’s (UDM’s) Mongameli Bobani.

Another small party with only one councillor, the African Independence Congress (AIC), also switched allegiance at the eleventh hour on Wednesday night.

AIC spokesman Aubrey Mhlongo told Business Day that his party had decided to ditch the ANC after it emerged that the governing party’s Eastern Cape legislature had failed to support its demand to move Matatiele from the Eastern Cape to KwaZulu-Natal.

Mhlongo warned the ANC that if it did not deliver on its promise to move Matatiele, the AIC would gun for Ekurhuleni, which the governing party controls thanks only to the support of the AIC.

The motion against Trollip was first announced by EFF leader Julius Malema in Parliament in February.

Malema said at the time that his party would table and pass the motion as a way of punishing the DA for not supporting land expropriation without compensation.

As if in a show of force, both the DA and the EFF held political rallies in the metro to state their

cases on Wednesday. “The reasons Malema put for removing me were undemocratic. Like a spoilt child when he didn’t get his way in Parliament with his mad motion that would cripple the economy.

“Malema said he would remove me based on my skin colour,” Trollip told the DA rally.

The DA received 47% of the vote in the metro in the last local government elections and remained shy of the majority needed to run the metro alone.

The DA entered into a coalition with a number of small parties, which held one or two seats each.

Its coalition with the UDM, Congress of the People (COPE) and the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) became increasingly shaky as tension between the DA and the UDM worsened. The UDM, which held the deputy mayorship, eventually quit the coalition and is supporting the EFF’s motion together with the ANC.

PA leader Gayton McKenzie said in an open letter on Tuesday that his party would support Trollip in the motion.

Malema said that the EFF was using the metro to demonstrate how serious the party was about expropriation without compensation.

The Nelson Mandela Bay metro has 120 seats, of which 61 seats must be obtained to have a simple majority.

The DA holds 57 seats in council, while the ANC has 50 seats. The EFF has 6 seats, while the UDM has two.

The rest of the seats are divided one each to COPE, the ACDP, the AIC, the PA and the United Front of the Eastern Cape (UFEC).

The DA, ACDP, COPE, AIC and the PA have all indicated that they will vote against the EFF motion, which gives the DA a tally of 61 votes. The votes of the ANC, UDM, EFF and UFEC would amount to 59 votes.

Kristoff Adelbert, Trollip’s chief of staff, said the motion would not pass if the motion did not have 61 votes.