JUST IN: Mpho Phalatse ousted from office through no-confidence motion

Johannesburg Mayor Mpho Phalatse has been removed from office through a motion of no confidence.

Motion of no confidence

Phalatse, a member of the Democratic Alliance (DA), was voted out on Thursday afternoon during an ordinary council meeting.

This after three motions of no confidence were filed last week, by the African Transformation Movement (ATM), Al Jama-ah and the African Independent Congress (AIC) against the mayor.

ALSO READ: ActionSA to put forward its own mayoral candidate to replace DA’s Phalatse

The minority parties accused the DA-led multi-party coalition government of plunging the metro into financial and political instability.

140 councillors voted in favour of Phalatse’s removal from office while 129 were against her ouster. No councillors abstained from voting.

This was the third attempt at removing Phalatse from office after she was booted out last September, and African National Congress (ANC) Joburg regional chair, Dada Morero, was elected unopposed.

The South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg later reinstated Phalatse in her position after ruling that her removal – also brought by minority parties and backed by the ANC – was unlawful, unconstitutional and invalid.

Fallout between DA and PA

At the centre of Phalatse’s removal on Thursday, was the fallout between the DA and the Patriotic Alliance (PA) over a power-sharing deal.

The multi-party coalition led by the DA wanted the PA to rejoin the coalition government by taking over two positions in the mayoral committee in the portfolios of economic and infrastructure development. However, the negotiations failed at the eleventh hour on Wednesday evening after the DA rejected the deal.

This led to the collapse of the multi-party coalition in the City.

In rejecting the proposal, the DA branded the PA as “corrupt” and said it would not hand over the two lucrative portfolios to a party that is greedy and dishonest.

Multi-party coalition collapses

According to ActionSA, one of the coalition partners, if the DA had accepted the deal – this would have restored the majority of the coalition in Joburg and defeated the motions of no confidence in Phalatse.

The DA on Thursday said it refused to allow the PA to join the coalition government because the party had “patronage extraction as its goal”.

The party accused the PA of attempting to obtain control over the coffers of the metro in order to “rob Joburg blind” or to leverage its failure to obtain such control to get a better deal from the ANC.

Meanwhile, ActionSA said it would put forward its own mayoral candidate to replace Phalatse as mayor.

Joburg council Speaker Colleen Makhubele, a member of the Congress of the People (Cope), also faces a motion of no confidence.

NOW READ: Coalition instability: ‘Phalatse remains vulnerable and can be ousted yet again’ – analyst