Water blues hit Joburg as parties duel over positions

Coalition partners wrangle over MMC slices

As the City of Johannesburg faces a potential water crisis, the city’s political leadership is preoccupied with fights over which positions parties should take in council.

Large parts of the city have been without water for at least two days, emphasising the pressing need for leadership in the city, from the MMC who will be appointed to lead the department of environment and infrastructure services.

Johannesburg Water is an entity of the municipality and has its own board and executive which runs the day-to-day running of the utility.

The entity communicated it might take more than 72 hours for the system to normalise.

By yesterday, selecting MMCs was still not finalised following the EFF’s declaration that it wanted to be represented in Gauteng metros.

Prior to the ousting of Mpho Phalatse as mayor on Friday and the swearing in of AlJama-Ah’s Thapelo Amad as her replacement, the EFF had not made any moves in the council of 270 seats.

Amad was on Monday expected to be sworn in alongside his 10 MMCs, but that did not happen because discussions about which party would take which positions had not yet been finalised.

Yesterday, the ANC met with minority parties represented in council and Sowetan was informed that discussions during a meeting in Braamfontein deadlocked.

Despite speaker of council Colleen Makhubele last week saying MMCs would be sworn in with the mayor and assurances from ANC provincial secretary TK Nciza that an announcement would be made today, some within “government of local unity” are not too certain this will happen.

“There won’t be any announcement. They can say that but there won’t be anything. We were deadlocked during today’s [yesterday] meeting because ANC doesn’t want to compromise. They can’t have five positions. The way things are going it’s going to be a big fight,” the insider said.

Another insider said minority parties accepted the proposal on the table as is, that they would have only one mayoral committee seat.

“Everything with the PA, ANC and EFF has been concluded. The ANC wants five MMC positions, the EFF and PA both want two positions, meaning there’s only one post left,” the second insider said.

Another insider who was at yesterday’s meeting said while the ANC was unwilling to compromise, they told the party to go back and come with a new position today.

“There’s no decision as yet.

We’ve just come out of the meeting and the ANC was told to come back tomorrow about what everyone wants,” the third insider said.

Parties who form part of the new coalition include the ANC, EFF, PA, AL-Jama-Ah, UDM, COPE, AIC, AHC, ATM, APC, PAC and GOOD who have a combined 140 seats in council out of 270 seats. Currently, Al-Jama-Ah has the mayoral chain, COPE speaker and GOOD chair of chairs.

Meanwhile, Nciza said: “It’s just a finalisation by the mayor and I’m sure the mayor will have appointed [the MCCs] tomorrow (today).

“Minority parties are accommodated and will be in the mayoral committee. Everything is running smoothly.”