The ANC goes into today’s special Joburg council meeting confident that Mpho Phalatse will be ousted as mayor and replaced by a councillor from one of the minority parties.
ANC caucus leader and regional chairperson Dada Morero told Sowetan they were expecting 140 of the 270 councillors, who make up the Joburg legislature, to vote for Phalatse’s removal. The number of votes required to remove a sitting mayor is 136.
This means that the ANC is expecting the EFF, the Patriotic Alliance (PA) and the minority coalition to vote with it.
The PA only last week announced that it would be joining the DA-led coalition. But this week they changed their tune, ditching the DA and accusing it of being a “white supremacist party”.
Morero said negotiations were expected to be concluded by last night as to who from the minority parties would be elected as Johannesburg’s new mayor.
Speaker of council, Cope representative Colleen Makhubela, also faces a vote of no confidence in today’s meeting. ActionSA wants her out of that position.
Morero said they would support Makhubela to retain her position.
This will be the second motion of no confidence in Phalatse in four months.
Phalatse was removed as mayor after a vote of no confidence on September 29 2022. She was replaced as mayor by Morero.
Morero lasted 25 days — from September 30 to October 2022 — after Phalatse successfully challenged her ousting in the Johannesburg High Court.
The court agreed with Phalatse and the DA that the committee that had approved the meeting at which she was removed, had been unlawfully constituted and was therefore unconstitutional and invalid.
The Johannesburg High Court agreed that Makhubela had acted unlawfully when she called an extraordinary council sitting two days after her election.
This is because a programming committee that took the decision to hold the sitting did not quorate.
The court also found that Morero’s election was unlawful, unconstitutional and invalid and restored Phalatse to her position.
Meanwhile, ActionSA, which is a DA coalition partner, has called out the DA for “abandoning Johannesburg mayor Mpho Phalatse and the residents of Joburg”.
ActionSA chairperson Michael Beaumont said the DA had collapsed negotiations to restore the majority of the governing multiparty coalition in Johannesburg.
Beaumont said the coalition parties had reached a point at which a deal was accepted by the PA. He said the deal would have restored the majority of the coalition in Johannesburg that would have kept the ANC out in the economic capital and, most likely, the EFF out in Ekurhuleni.
“The deal, arising from months of negotiations, was agreed by the negotiating teams of all parties, including the DA, and involved ActionSA sacrificing two positions in the mayoral committee to accommodate the PA and ensure the sustainability of the coalition government. Despite this, the DA’s Federal Executive rejected the deal,” Beaumont said.
He claimed the DA’s stated reasons for rejecting the deal were a “false pretence to mask their intention to allow the coalition government to collapse in Johannesburg”.
“Citing concerns about the PA’s intentions in the economic development portfolio is irrational. If evidence exists that a party plans to commit corruption within the coalition, they should not be brought in any position. Despite this, the DA accepts the PA in the position of roads and transport, which houses a much larger budget and procurement capacity,” Beaumont said.
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