DA’s Midvaal mayor congratulates De Lille on the ‘good job she’s doing’

Despite the fact that the DA reduced Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille’s status as mayor to being nothing more than “ceremonial”, her counterpart in Midvaal, Gauteng, treated her no differently on Friday to the other “non-ceremonial” mayors.

The DA governs several major metros, mostly in coalition with smaller parties, although it won Midvaal and Cape Town outright in 2016 elections.

At the end of May, the Cape Town Council voted overwhelmingly to strip mayor Patricia de Lille of her executive powers. De Lille now has only a ceremonial role, though she has mostly tried to ignore that.

The motion was brought by deputy mayor and Democratic Alliance caucus leader Ian Neilson.

De Lille fired back in council last month, saying she had reserved her rights in the matter and would see the party about it in court. She has also challenged her expulsion from the party on technical grounds.

Baloyi must have been stuck with the difficult decision of how to congratulate De Lille on Friday morning.

His message appeared to be tailor-made for her, congratulating her on the “great job” she was doing after passing her budget and integrated development plan (IDP).

“This job isn’t for the faint-hearted,” he added. However, he tweeted similar messages to Nelson Mandela Bay mayor Athol Trollip, Tshwane Mayor Solly Msimanga and Joburg mayor Herman Mashaba.

https://twitter.com/BaloyiBongani1/status/1007542242331029504

The DA has accused De Lille of corruption, abuse of power and mismanagement. The audit report released on the city last month found that Cape Town had fallen off the clean audit wagon, according to auditor-general Kimi Makwetu’s annual report on municipalities for the 2016/17 financial year.

It was the first time in at least a decade that the metro did not make the list of municipalities that received clean audits, despite the Western Cape having the largest concentration of municipalities with clean audits at 70%.

Cape Town was one of six municipalities that regressed in the year under review, the report said.