With the Patriotic Alliance’s Marlon Daniels out of the running for the mayorship in Nelson Mandela Bay, the door has been opened for Mongameli Bobani (UDM) to take the lead spot.
That is if the opposition parties forge ahead with plans to form a new government in the metro next week.
The PA gave up its mayoral candidacy on Wednesday after the EFF said in a late-night statement on Tuesday that it would never support a candidate from the party.
The EFF said it would never give the city to “thugs” and if there was no worthy candidate from the opposition benches, it would not participate in the vote.
Bobani was the other name put forward as a potential candidate at the meeting with opposition party bosses on Tuesday, PA president Gayton McKenzie confirmed.
“It was between Bobani and Marlon, and it came to a vote and Marlon was chosen.
“We have no problem with Bobani,” McKenzie said.
The candidacy is, however, not guaranteed for Bobani as the national leaders are set to meet again in the run-up to the council meeting.
While the Bay opposition parties had hoped to hold the meeting on Friday, their request to speaker Jonathan Lawack was denied on Wednesday.
Lawack said the council rules state that should the majority of councillors request a council meeting in writing, the meeting “shall not take place before the expiry of five business days of receipt of the request”. The request was submitted on Friday last week.
The opposition parties – the ANC, EFF, PA, African Independent Congress (AIC), UDM and the United Front (UF) – hold a combined 61 of the 120 seats in the council.The DA, the Congress of the People (COPE) and the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) have a total of 59.
In a statement on Wednesday, McKenzie said the Tuesday meeting had been held in “good spirits” and only the EFF had not voted for Daniels to be mayor.
“The enmity between myself and Mr [Julius] Malema is well known,” he said.
“We have had huge personal disagreements and have hurled many insults at each other at every opportunity.
“The PA, however, is the kingmaker in Nelson Mandela Bay. The government cannot be changed without our help in the metro.
“Whoever thinks it is possible without the PA is either dishonest or misinformed about the workings of local government.”AIC secretary-general Mahlubi Jafta said there had been an agreement by the time they all left Tuesday’s meeting that Daniels would be the candidate. “We still believe that when the EFF bring up their issues in the forum we can come up with solutions,” Jafta said.
Daniels said the no-confidence motions were on the agenda for Thursday next week’s scheduled council sitting and he did not therefore believe it was necessary to push for a meeting on either Monday or Tuesday.
“Tuesday is the date we can get, in terms of the rules, but why force for 48 hours when the motions are already on the agenda?” he said.
Bobani said he believed they should still push ahead for an earlier meeting, but no date had been confirmed yet.It also emerged on Wednesday that McKenzie offered the deputy mayorship to ACDP councillor Lance Grootboom, who is a member of the current coalition with the DA and COPE.
Grootboom said McKenzie had phoned him at the weekend, but he referred him to his national bosses, who turned down the offer, saying they could not be part of a move to put the ANC back in power.
McKenzie confirmed offering Grootboom the post.
“We were supposed to be deputy mayor, well the mayor or deputy mayor were options for us, and I said ‘I will lobby for you to get that position’,” he said.
McKenzie said he wanted to include more parties in the new coalition.
The DA, meanwhile, said in a statement on Wednesday it believed the no-confidence motions would undermine the safety of Bay residents.
DA provincial leader Nqaba Bhanga said: “Any opposition party that seeks to hand power back to the ANC seeks to advance a programme that will bring back a state of criminality and corruption.
“The ANC dragged its feet for seven years before rushing an illegal metro police service into existence in May 2016.
“Minimum qualifications, basic education and criminal credentials for metro police officers were overlooked in a step that appeared to have violated Chapter 12 of the Police Services Act.”