• Lucky Sele, PR councillor in Mogale City Local Municipality writes:
Residents of Mogale City Local Municipality (MCLM) have recently become aware of a standoff between the DA government in Mogale City and the majority of councillors. I have always believed that the stability of Mogale City was imperilled by the DA minority government taking office at the first council meeting without taking into consideration the fact that in a democratic state, you need a majority to rule.
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The DA nominated the political office bearers (the mayor, speaker, and chief whip) and they included the IFP, ATM, ACDP, VF+, and PAC on the mayoral committee. Out of a council of 77 council members, 35 council members make up this multi-party coalition.
Essentially, this meant that the ANC, which had 31 councillors, and the EFF, which had 11 councillors, made up a total of 42 majority councillors and served as an opposition to a minority administration.
Because the ANC acknowledged democratic results that at the time, the majority of councillors had decided to vote with the DA. The past year and a half of DA governance can be seen as a smooth transition. The Executive Mayor has never experienced difficulties working with ANC ward councillors while in office; in fact, there has been more cooperation on our side than on the DA’s.
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Unfortunately, the Mayor’s reception of wards ANC councillors are directly elected led him to employ unscrupulous tactics to frustrate ward councillors’ requests for prompt responses to service delivery queries. The Mayor has taken on the role of a super councillor to whom a simple service like streetlights must be reported to be resolved on time. In contrast to ward councillors, who are given an extremely long turnaround time on responses to community inquiries by the municipality.
When a ward councillor reports a problem and it goes unattended unless the Executive Mayor personally steps in to remedy it, it says a lot about the DA system in terms of service delivery, in particular when it comes to pursuing popularity in the townships. This intentional structure not only undermined councillors but also irritated our communities to the point that they caved into the DA.
One instance of this is the delivery of water in rural areas. The Mayor set up his small teams of contact people, made sure the ward councillor was frustrated with the need to deliver water to her communities and had his small team deliver the water directly to the communities to promote the Mayor.
Service delivery was ultimately hampered since the mayor couldn’t be everywhere. This is demonstrated by a comparison of the 2nd Quarter 2021–2022 and 2nd Quarter 2022–2023 Performance Reports; Utilities Management Services achievements decreased from 82% to 45%, this department includes Water, Electricity services, and Bulk infrastructure services, while Roads decreased from 88% to 59% because service delivery is Macro managed by the DA, on where it occurs, how, and when, centrally positioning the Mayor popularity contest utilizing public resources for this campaign.
This explains some individuals now want to claim that the mayor has the support of the people, however, it is preposterous to claim that even though the DA Mayor had billboards all over the city, the citizens of Mogale City didn’t elect him as their preferred mayor. The Mayor lost the Ward to the ANC, who received little over 30% of the vote in the 2021 Local Government Elections. Today, the mayor of Mogale City wants to present himself as a victim while clinging to power.
As the election results were announced, the gallery at the first council meeting was filled with ANC supporters. The DA had triumphed, obtaining the majority of votes for political office bearer. The ANC showed poise as it accepted its position in opposition. The ANC also showed grace in accepting its defeat.
Today, it’s absurd, that when the DA Mayor must be held accountable for the Auditor General’s adverse findings in the Municipality, and non-compliance in the execution of his responsibilities, he buses few people from townships to protest the council holding him accountable.
If he were the open and truthful person he professes to be, he should account to the community of Mogale how the municipality’s financial statements regressed from the past financial year to a qualified audit opinion. The DA must allow democracy and transparency to prevail!
