Three mayors in two years — this is the situation in the once stable Ekurhuleni after a motion of no confidence in the ANC-EFF coalition candidate mayor Sivuyile Ngodwana was passed last week. The “puppet mayor”, as he was dubbed by opposition parties in the council, is from the African Independent Congress (AIC) and was accused of failing residents by kowtowing to the EFF in his running of the city.
The situation in the city shows how an ANC-EFF coalition can go wrong and what the implications could be for service delivery and stability. Internal ANC dynamics and a brazen approach to grab power by the EFF are all at play and are proving to be a recipe for chaos.
ANC Gauteng leadership chair Panyaza Lesufi and its secretary, TK Nciza, negotiated a deal with the EFF with the aim of taking control from DA-led coalitions in Gauteng metros and municipalities across the province in the aftermath of the 2021 local government election.
Lesufi, whose leadership style is to pretend to look busy with gimmicks and pop-up press opportunities, presides over a province with a 33.8% unemployment rate, according to Stats SA’s fourth-quarter figures. He is set to face a tough election next month, as the ANC’s support was at just 50% in the 2019 election and at 45.5% in the 2021 poll.
In Ekurhuleni the ANC has largely been outwitted by the EFF, which effectively took control of the city, installing a puppet mayor and taking up five key MMC posts, including that of finance, despite the ANC being the largest party in the council.
The arrangement caused deep unhappiness in the ANC’s Ekurhuleni caucus. Its chief whip, Jongizizwe Dlabathi, penned a long letter to the national leadership illustrating how the EFF was using the ANC to win over voters by means of the coalition.
The EFF’s tenure has been littered with controversy, from a car crash involving the party’s finance MMC Nkululeko Dunga’s blue light convoy to an ugly and unnecessary altercation with the office of the auditor-general (AG) over the municipality’s audit outcomes. The EFF accused the AG of playing politics after there were delays in releasing the council’s audit. However, the delays were a result of disputes the city itself had raised.
Incidentally, the city’s audit outcomes also deteriorated under the EFF’s watch — Ekurhuleni was one of two metros, the other being Cape Town, that received a clean audit in the previous reporting season. This time Ekurhuleni got an unqualified audit, with findings.
Municipal workers in the city have been feeling the effect of the deterioration of its finances and the political distrust among coalition partners. SA Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) deputy chair in Ekurhuleni, Chris Mavunda, tells the FM that workers are alarmed at what they have learnt about the handling of finances and alleged mismanagement in the city. He cites a number of complaints, among them that workers’ equipment is not being maintained. He says this results in them sitting around idly while, in the case of waste collectors, the city hires third-party providers to service their routes.
“It is a blatant misuse of resources. The trucks are there but are not maintained,” Mavunda says. In addition, he accuses the council of no longer paying agreed-upon overtime and acting allowances or buying protective equipment. Samwu submitted a grievance about this just last week, before the motion of no confidence in the mayor, Mavunda says.
“The situation is dire. We do engage with our alliance partner, the ANC, but the party needs to convince its coalition partners. If it is so bad in council, just imagine [what] a coalition government at national level [would be like],” he says.
Workers are deeply concerned about wage talks in the council, set to kick off in three weeks’ time, because of the political instability and the financial crisis in the city.
The ANC in council has long complained about the deterioration of service delivery and the rapid deterioration of Ekurhuleni’ finances (it is broke). This is a bizarre situation, as the party is a member of the governing coalition. Could it be that difficult to speak to its coalition partner directly?
The many desperate press conferences held by the ANC are a clear illustration that the coalition is failing and that partners are not talking to each other except through such forums. It came to a head two weeks ago, when there was a physical altercation between the ANC and the EFF in council during which, reports indicate, then mayor Ngodwana’s phone was pocketed by an EFF councillor in an incident that was later described as a “misunderstanding”. He was voted out as mayor on Thursday last week.
Ngodwana is one of three AIC members with a seat, and says he felt betrayed by the ANC; its vote in the motion of no confidence, which was brought by ActionSA, was split — 25 councillors voted for Ngodwana’s removal despite an order from Lesufi and the provincial leadership for the party’s caucus to abstain from the vote. The DA abstained, though one of its councillors voted in favour of Ngodwana’s removal.
A new mayor was set to be elected on Thursday, but there was little indication that the ANC and the EFF had found the way forward by Monday.
The ANC’s argument is that, as the largest party in the council, it, and not the EFF, should be accorded the most positions — and that it should be allowed to select a mayoral candidate. The problem is that though this is the view of the national ANC and the party in the council, Lesufi and Nciza are determined to keep the EFF tie-up going. The risk they face is that if they boot out the EFF in Ekurhuleni it could place the ANC’s coalitions with the party in the other Gauteng councils at risk.
It’s a lose-lose situation for the ANC, but one that is patently self-inflicted.