Political infighting in metros ‘may lead to collapse’
THE shaky relationships between partners in coalition governments in South Africa’s metros may lead to collapses in governance and paralysed service delivery.
This is according to political analyst Dr Somadoda Fikeni, who was reacting to the bickering between the DA, UDM and EFF.
The DA and UDM in Nelson Mandela Bay have not been seeing eye to eye on how the metro should be governed. This has resulted in UDM councillor Mongameli Bobani being removed as the deputy mayor.
The EFF have decided to stay away from councils in protest at what they deem to be “shortsighted” DA bullying tactics.
The red berets hit back on Saturday, saying they did “not owe the DA any explanation whatsoever”.
Fikeni believes that if the coalition partners cannot find each other in the boardroom, the situation may lead to a complete collapse of governance in Nelson Mandela Bay, and in the Tshwane and Johannesburg metros, where the DA and EFF, in particular, govern at each other’s mercy.
“The break-up of coalition arrangements may lead to greater paralysis which in some municipalities may lead to the actual collapse of the governance there or even the removal of the ruling arrangement,” said Fikeni.
“And thereafter it might lead to a very weak coalition arrangement which, if it is not attended to in good time, may lead to an administrator being appointed or in extreme cases a by-election being called in order to get some relegitimisation of a new authority.”
The ANC in Nelson Mandela Bay has already called on the Eastern Cape department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs MEC, Fikile Xasa to put the troubled metro under administration, saying “governance has been compromised and suffocated because of the infighting within the coalition”.
Fikeni believes it would be premature for Xasa to invoke Section 139 of the Constitution and administer the metro as there was still room for the UDM and DA to find each other at a political level. But should the UDM and DA fail to find common ground and the courts were unable to make them see eye to eye, the appointment of an administrator might well be the last resort to restore sanity in the metro.
“If the leaders of these [warring] parties cannot resolve their disagreements and the court intervention cannot help them, then it leads to paralysis of governance, in which case the MEC [Xasa] will have no option but to intervene. But for now it would be well advised for the MEC not to rush for an administrator but to observe the situation, but when it fails government would be irresponsible not to appoint an administrator.” — zingisam@dispatch.co.za