Trollip’s team reviews year

As milestone nears, Bay executive meets to strategise – sans Bobani

WITH their one-year anniversary as bosses of the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality fast approaching, mayor Athol Trollip and his executive met at the luxury Shamwari Game Reserve to take stock of their performance in local government.

The two-day strategic breakaway session, which ended yesterday, was also aimed at finalising the coalition government’s long-term economic strategy.

But while coalition partners COPE and the ACDP attended the session with the DA, deputy mayor Mongameli Bobani did not score an invitation.

This, according to Trollip, was because Bobani continues to behave like an opposition member instead of working with his coalition partners.

“We’re busy finalising our longterm economic strategy and also looking at an assessment of the last year in government – where the risk areas are and what we’re going to do to mitigate them to improve our performance,” Trollip said.

Bobani and Trollip have been at loggerheads for about seven months, clashing on a number of issues in the council and prompting leaders of the DA and UDM to intervene in the impasse.

Yesterday, Trollip said: “Coalition partners means you need to cooperate and coalesce around mutual things. He [Bobani] hasn’t been doing that.

“He’s been voting against us on every single item and behaving like an opposition member, not a coalition member, and we have been trying to deal with it for the last seven months.

“I said to him until he decides he wants to be an opposition member or a coalition partner, he is not going to caucus or plan with us, and it’s as simple as that.”

Trollip said it was “common cause” that Bobani met with opposition parties and the so-called black caucus in the Bay.

“That is not the kind of behaviour that is expected of a coalition partner. So, he’s made his bed and he must sleep in it.”

Bobani declined to comment, but referred questions to UDM president Bantu Holomisa.

Holomisa said Trollip also met with opposition party members, which was evidenced by the fact that he had managed to convince Patriotic Alliance councillor Marlon Daniels to sign the Bay co-governance agreement.

Trollip said the strategic session had not been funded by the municipality, but rather by “a funder that sponsors the Democratic Alliance in many of its training and capacitation courses.

“The strategic planning session is not being paid for by the ratepayer, as they were . . . under the ANC.”

Holomisa said it was “a blessing in disguise” that Bobani had not attended the breakaway sponsored by a DA benefactor.

“It raises the question – what interest does that financial sponsor of theirs have in the municipality?

“There is no difference then from the Guptas . . . Why must the coalition be bought like this in daylight?”

City manager Johann Mettler confirmed the municipality definitely did not bankroll the session.