EXECUTIVE mayor of Joburg, Mpho Phalatse, has been ousted from her position following a motion of no confidence by the minority coalition parties.
City of Joburg council Speaker, Colleen Makhubele, made the announcement on Thursday afternoon after a council meeting.
According to Makhubele, 140 councillors voted in favour of the motion of no confidence, while 129 voted against it.
Phalatse will now make way for a new mayor from a coalition government led by the ANC and other minority parties such as the ACDP, FF Plus, COPE, IFP, ActionSA, and the Patriotic Alliance (PA).
The ANC in Gauteng has welcomed the removal of Phalatse through a motion of no confidence passed by the City of Johannesburg Council on Thursday.
The party said the motion, which was supported by the majority of the Council, was supported by the ANC Caucus and other parties as a mechanism of rescuing the municipality from the maladministration of the DA-led multiparty government.
“Over the past few weeks, the DA-led multiparty government has introduced austerity measures in the City of Johannesburg, under the guise of stabilising the municipality’s finances. In reality, the finances of the municipality are in shambles following months of mismanagement. The DA-led multiparty government inherited a municipality that was financially viable and one that had important projects in the pipeline to generate billions of rands in revenue,” said ANC Gauteng Provincial Secretary, Thembinkosi Nciza.
“Under the DA-led multiparty government, the municipality has experienced unprecedented instability in governance. In just a few months, the Mayoral Committee has been reshuffled numerous times. This had devastating consequences for the critical work that the infrastructure department has been involved in – work which anchors the economic growth and development objectives of the municipality.”
On Wednesday, ActionSA accused the DA of allowing Phalatse’s political career to end and keeping an arrogant attitude towards coalition partners and the future of the City of Johannesburg.
“ActionSA spares a thought for Mayor Mpho Phalatse who has been abandoned by her own party despite her determined efforts to lead this coalition government,” said the party’s National Chairperson, Michael Beaumont.
“Final negotiations ultimately failed because the DA refused to listen to the opinions of all of its coalition partners who wrote to the DA urging that the original proposal that had been agreed to by all parties (including the DA) and accepted by the PA, should be honoured. This proposal would have restored the majority of the coalition, defeated these motions of no confidence tomorrow (Thursday) and delivered some semblance of stability in Johannesburg.”
THE DA, meanwhile, accused the Patriotic Alliance (PA) of handing control of the city back to the ANC using “extortionist tactics”.
“This follows after the PA last night refused to support the current multiparty coalition government unless it got access to the city’s finances through control over the two most lucrative portfolios on the mayoral committee: economic and infrastructure development,” the DA’s spokesperson Cilliers Brink said on Thursday.
“From the start of the current round of negotiations to stave-off a motion of no confidence in Mayor Mpho Phalatse, the Democratic Alliance (DA) has made it clear that we will not hand over the hard-earned taxes paid by the people of Joburg to a party that has patronage extraction as is its goal.”
“Our concern over this possibility only intensified as negotiations progressed, with Gayton McKenzie repeatedly making it clear that his party has no interest in principled governance and exists solely to leverage and abuse any power it obtains to extract corrupt rents.”
“As a result, the current round of negotiations were characterised by the PA’s constant extortionist tactics, apparently designed to play the coalition off against the ANC to get a better deal for itself.”
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