COALITION
politics, away from one-party dominance.
For better or worse the opposition pact would run until the next local elections, in 2021.
Days later the ANC officially stepped down from power in Johannesburg, Tshwane, Nelson Mandela Bay and other municipalities where it could not get parties to work with it to retain power.
A year later, the opposition coalition looks wobbly. It has lost the Mogale City municipality on the West Rand as it could not keep the voting bloc united, while the EFF has been boycotting Da-led coalition council sittings, placing the already unstable hung municipalities under pressure.
In Johannesburg, DA mayor Herman Mashaba has managed to keep the coalition together, despite the reservations the EFF had about him becoming mayor.
In Tshwane the DA’S Solly Msimanga got a raw deal, as the municipality was more than R2bn in deficit. To truly turn SA’S capital around, sorting out the financial mess in the city was seen as the most important thing to do. For Msimanga the aim is to have a fully funded budget, which has been tabled for the 2017-2018 financial year.
Since Msimanga took over, the city has attracted R2.29bn in investment in just nine months, and is in the process of extricating itself from the R2bn smart-meter contract (found to be irregular by the auditor-general).
The Tshwane coalition grabs less headlines than the turbulent leadership of Nelson Mandela
What it means: Coalitions’ success in municipalities will be crucial if the ANC is to be toppled nationally in 2019.
Bay, as there are “no real issues”, says Awie Erasmus, one of the four FF Plus councillors in Tshwane.
Maimane announced at a briefing following the DA mayors’ first year in office that “after only a single year of DA governance, the city (Nelson Mandela Bay) rose from being the second-lowest trusted metro in the country, to second highest – a real vote of confidence in Mayor (Athol) Trollip and his government.”
It will, however, not be the achievement of establishing the city’s first metro police service, or the fact that the city is in the process of providing 12,000 informal households with running water and sanitation for the first time, that will be remembered as the most prominent detail of the coalition’s first year in office in the metro.
What will stand out will be the turmoil between two individuals, as the impasse between Trollip and the UDM’S ousted deputy mayor, Mongameli Bobani, has now moved to the courts. The UDM has asked the high court in Port Elizabeth to interdict Bobani’s removal as deputy mayor through a motion of no-confidence, as well as to issue a declaratory order that his removal was unconstitutional and unlawful, and that it be reviewed and set aside. His removal as deputy mayor followed