Former Joburg mayor Mpho Phalatse. Photographer: Guillem Sartorio/Bloomberg via Getty Images
After the 2021 local government elections, the City of Johannesburg was under a cloud of uncertainty as neither of the two dominant parties received a mandate to govern on their own, with residents voting in 18 political parties to form the council.
The ANC, which had controlled the city since the start of democracy, first lost power in the 2016 elections and found it difficult to claw back support.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) failed to gain momentum after losing its mayor, Herman Mashaba, in 2019. Mashaba opted to form his own political party, ActionSA, which would prove detrimental to the DA’s electoral rise in the city.
With 71 seats in the council, the DA managed to attract parties into a coalition, promising to govern better than the ANC. With the support of its coalition partners, including the Inkatha Freedom Party, IFP (seven seats), Freedom Front Plus (4), African Christian Democratic Party (3), Congress of the People (1), United Democratic Movement (1), Action SA (44), and a surprise last-minute ally, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), the DA’s Mpho Phalatse became the second councillor from the party to wear the mayoral chain.
Phalatse defeated the ANC’s mayoral candidate, Mpho Moerane, receiving 144 out of the 265 votes.
But, less than a year into her position, Phalatse was under siege, with the ANC attracting the smaller opposition parties in an effort to unseat her.
Phalatse essentially fell victim to the DA’s growing reputation among resentful smaller parties for assuming an arrogant “Big Brother” stance in the multi-party coalition it had created to ensure it governed the city as well as other metros.
Some of its own councillors abstained from voting when a motion of no confidence was tabled against Phalatse. The IFP followed suit and Cope’s Colleen Makhubele and the Patriotic Alliance (PA), which had once voted for Phalatse, stood against her, together with the EFF, ensuring her demise.
On 30 September last year, the mayoral chain returned to the ANC, whose candidate was now Dada Morero, the party’s regional chair.
This was also a pivotal time in the ANC-EFF coalition. The two parties, which had fallen out during negotiations after both the 2016 and 2021 local government elections, were now working together.
The EFF had sent its 29 votes Phalatse’s way in 2021, to spite the ANC, after the two failed to reach an agreement during coalition negotiations. While the DA benefitted, a vote from the EFF was a double-edged sword for the blue party, which had decided against any partnership with the EFF after it was betrayed by the red berets who reneged on their partnership by voting in Nelson Mandela Bay mayor Athol Trollip after the 2016 election.
Morero’s term was short-lived after Phalatse raced to the courts to challenge his election on the basis of several arguments, including that the speaker had given her 16 hours’ notice and DA councillors were not afforded an opportunity to participate in the motion of no confidence debate.
A month into Morero’s mayorship, in October 2022, the courts deposed him, reinstated Phalatse with immediate effect.
Unwilling to accept being relegated to the opposition benches, the ANC, with the help of its traditional allies in council, the EFF and PA, ensured Phalatse was unseated again. She was replaced by Al Jama-ah’s Thapelo Amad, a controversial pick by the ANC, given his inexperience.
Amad’s incoherent media interviews resulted in political parties questioning his fitness to hold office. Overall, he proved to be a public relations disaster and he was forced to resign in April after he made claims of having secured a R9.5 billion loan to fund service delivery issues and a smart city.
The mayor’s resignation resulted in a tense standoff between the DA and ActionSA, with both parties wanting to take over the position. The DA opted to again raise Phalatse as its candidate while ActionSA proposed Funzi Ngobeni. Mashaba’s party lobbied for the support of its former coalition partners the IFP, FF+, ACDP, UDM and the PA. But the DA insisted on Phalatse, refusing to enter into a coalition with the PA.
With its eight votes, the PA stood in the way of the DA and ActionSA. retaining power in the council. The party refused to support Phalatse, instead proposing that the DA support its own candidate and party deputy president Kenny Kunene, and the negotiations reached an impasse.
The ANC faced its own problems. Its caucus refused to vote in a candidate from the smaller parties and instead insisted on Morero. The party’s national leaders had to intervene and Al Jama-ah councillor Kabelo Gwamanda was elected mayor last Friday.
Council seat allocation in Johannesburg:
- ANC = 91; DA = 71; Action sa = 44; EFF= 29; Patriotic Alliance = 8; IFP = 7
- Freedom Front + = 4; ACDP = 3; Al Jama-ah = 3; African Independent Congress = 2
- African Heart Congress = 1; GOOD = 1; ATM = 1; UDM = 1; COPE = 1; PAC = 1
- United Independent Movement = 1; African People’s Convention = 1