Cape Town will impose a six-month moratorium on evictions for rates and rent arrears when the African National Congress-New National Party coalition takes power in the unicity early next month.
The moratorium will be imposed until a policy on indigents is drafted.
Other changes the new regime promises include an independent audit of the Democratic Alliance rule, a switch to an executive mayoral system and the removal of city manager Robert Maydon. Further changes in the senior ranks of the city’s administration could follow after the audit.
The ANC-NNP wrested control of the DA flagship within hours of the floor-crossing window opening at midnight on Monday when 27 DA councillors promptly returned to the NNP. They included former DA chief whip Gavin Paulse and executive committee member David Erleigh.
The loss of Cape Town — the only metropolitan council not in ANC hands — and its R9-billion budget comes less than a year after the DA was ousted from the Western Cape government under the ANC-NNP’s cooperative governance pact.
Other council policies under review include the separate charges for sewerage and refuse on municipal accounts, because these items exceed rates in many poor communities. The costs are likely to be factored into the overall rates bill.
The rates policy that exempts owners of properties worth less than R50 000 and five-yearly property valuations will not change.
The Cape Town Housing Company, a Section 21 company, will be restructured to accelerate housing delivery.
The funding and deployment of municipal police — dubbed “penguins” because of their black- and-white uniforms — will also come under scrutiny. The DA spent R50-million to launch this project. There has been widespread criticism that they are glorified traffic officers who are deployed in the city centre and plush suburbs rather than in the crime-stricken Cape Flats.
Saleem Mowzer, a member of the city’s ANC executive, said the party saw the remaining two-and-a-half year council term as a transitional period to correct the DA’s mismanagement, which had left the council with a R240-million operating deficit. The council had R1,5-billion in the bank when the DA took control 20 months ago, he said.
Mowzer said the new administration would start consultations on a development policy to make Cape Town “a world-class African city”.
Among the new regime’s planned personnel changes is the return of former mayor NomaIndia Mfeketo from the private sector. Under the ANC-NNP agreement, the mayor will be an ANC member, and the deputy-mayor and speaker will come from the NNP.
The DA will be excluded from the mayoral committee, where seats will be split 6:4 between the ANC and NNP. The DA will also lose the chairmanship of the sub-councils, which will be split 50:50 between the NNP and ANC.