Outgoing Nelson Mandela Bay mayor, Retief Odendaal. Photo: Supplied
Ousted Nelson Mandela Bay mayor Retief Odendaal says his party will not bring a tit-for-tat motion of no confidence against the city’s new mayor, Gary van Niekerk, who replaced him in last week’s vote.
Nelson Mandela Bay is the latest in a series of metro councils — and smaller municipalities — in which coalitions governments led by the Democratic Alliance (DA) or the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) have been unseated by the ANC and Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) making use of smaller parties.
Odendaal served as mayor of a 10-party coalition government for eight months but was removed from office via a vote of no confidence last week after Van Niekerk’s party, the Northern Alliance, dumped the coalition in favour of the ANC-EFF bloc.
Last Friday, Van Niekerk, who served as speaker of Nelson Mandela Bay under the DA-led coalition, was voted in as executive mayor of the metro council with the support of the EFF, ANC and Northern Alliance.
Van Niekerk is the third mayor to hold office in Nelson Mandela Bay since the November 2021 local government elections, when the single vote difference between the DA and the ANC resulted in yet another coalition government.
Former Nelson Mandela Bay mayor Eugene Johnson of the ANC was voted in as speaker and Babalwa Lobishe, the ANC regional chairperson, as deputy mayor of the metro, which has been racked by instability since 2009.
Johnson was replaced by Odendaal when the 10-party coalition he led took control of the city in September 2022, with the Northern Alliance backing his mayoral bid in exchange for a speaker’s position for Van Niekerk.
In an interview with the Mail & Guardian on Monday, Odendaal said that the DA accepted the outcome and would not be bringing retaliatory motions of no confidence against Van Niekerk and other new officials, for the sake of stability in the city.
He said running the city with a 10-party coalition was “never going to be easy” but it had made “significant progress” in rebuilding the metro’s administration in the eight months he had held office.
The priority for the DA was to support stability in the metro, which has had 37 municipal managers since 2009 and countless coalition governments since 2016.
“The 10-party coalition was difficult but the approach that we had, where we treated each other as equals and took decisions jointly, did work fairly well. There was more stability in this large coalition than in most of those upcountry,” Odendaal said.
He said, after Van Niekerk, who had been suspended by a grouping in his own party, was reinstated, he had demanded to be made mayor, which had collapsed the coalition.
“There was nothing more we could do to try and keep it going,” Odendaal said. “The rest is history. The DA in Nelson Mandela Bay is not going to take any decision in terms of motions of no confidence lightly because it causes instability.”
“We will certainly not do anything that will be the cause of further instability,” he reiterated. “We are going to hold this government to account. Our attitude is going to be one where we would want to be in opposition, and hold them to account, but also be part of the solution by supporting, rather than being on the outside pointing out failures.
“Never say, never. We obviously would consider what is being done in the city. If they are really ineffective, and we see a prospect of success, we will consider it, but I think that political parties need to be responsible and put their own selfish interests aside,” he said.