Power-broker Patricia de Lille’s Independent Democrats (ID) wants to convince Cape Town’s two major political parties, the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the African National Congress (ANC) to work together in a unity government in Cape Town and 23 other Western Cape towns. Neither main party won a working majority in these municipalities.
She says her top prize in Cape Town would be an ID mayor with a DA or ANC deputy mayor with the executive shared with four mayoral committee members being drawn from the ANC and DA each. The ID would hold two positions, she suggested.
Another option was either an ANC or a DA mayor with an ID deputy mayor.
In an interview with I-Net Bridge on Monday, De Lille said: ”We will not give up our casting vote. There will be no coalitions. You don’t need to be in a coalition … in the system that we want, a multiparty committee, you don’t have to go into coalition with anyone.”
Her comments follow a hung council in Cape Town and 23 other councils in the Western Cape where the ID has the balance of power. Local government elections were held nationwide on March 1.
She says the ID wants a mayoral committee system across the province in which the major parties rule together with the ID.
Consensus would be ”very good” for Cape Town and the other councils, she said.
In Cape Town the DA emerged as the largest party with 90 seats out of 205 and the ANC came just behind with 81 seats. The ID has 23 and a variety of smaller parties the remainder.
She said there were three options for Cape Town: The DA and ID together with 113 seats — 90 plus 23 of the ID — and then there was an ANC and ID team working together with 104 seats or there was the DA/ID and ANC working together — with a large overall majority. The second option — the ANC and ID — could have an additional two seats coming from the United Democratic Movement to achieve a majority on the council, she noted.
The smaller parties represented on the council are the African Christian Democratic Party with seven, the African Muslim Party which has three and the Freedom Front Plus, the United Independent Front, the Universal Party and the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania with one seat each.
De Lille said there appeared to be broad agreement with the DA and ACDP that the current executive mayoral system should go. She believed that the ANC could be persuaded with this concept as well.
Although her party has not had talks with the DA at this stage, she confirmed that talks were held at a high level in Pretoria with the ANC at the weekend. She pointed out to the ANC that the ID supported transformation, transparency in government and working for the poor. Her party had also held talks with the ACDP. There was concensus, she said, on the move away from an executive mayor to a mayoral committee system.
”No-one can move without us … but we would prefer an ANC, ID and DA administration,” she said.
In the past when the ANC was in power it had only served its constituency, not the whole voting constituency. The DA had also only looked after its constituency when it was in power. There had to be support for all, she said.
It seems clear that at this stage both the ANC outgoing mayor Nomaindia Mfeketo and the DA mayoral candidate Helen Zille will not be favoured as mayoral candidates for the unity administration of the three parties — at least if the ID has its way.
Furthermore, compromise candidates — other than Mfeketo and Zille — may have to be brought in if the ANC and DA can’t accept an ID mayor. The ID’s Cape Town mayoral candidate is a relative newcomer to politics, Simon Grindrod, a former hotel manager.
Meanwhile, Cape Talk radio news reports that the DA claims that minority parties including the ACDP had offered to deal with that party — a total of 106 seats — to get it into power. The DA was, apparently, considering its options. This would require all the parties on the council excluding the ANC and ID to cooperate with the DA.
A new mayor of Cape Town must be elected by March 18. – I-Net Bridge