Helen Zille (”The ANC is trying to destroy us,” April 28) wants to create the impression that the Cape Town administration is running smoothly, that there are no hindrances to service delivery and that, if there are problems, the African National Congress is to blame.
Zille needs to show some degree of maturity and admit that the current situation is exclusively of her own creation. She must stop blaming others, especially the ANC, for the status quo.
The first mistake Zille made was to abandon her own party’s election promise to use the executive committee system instead of the executive mayoral system used by the previous city administration. It was not the ANC that promised this system of governance: it was Tony Leon, Theuns Botha and the Democratic Alliance’s own election manifesto.
Zille’s rejection of the DA’s key election promise led to the formation of a DA-led coalition with several other parties that are not on the same ideological page. This gave her a one-vote lead and resulted in the exclusion of the ANC and the Independent Democrats.
If she had stuck to her party’s election promise, she would have ensured that 90% of the vote in Cape Town was represented in the management of the city, and that a more stable coalition government was in place. Instead she excluded the 50% of the vote representing mostly African and coloured voters. As a result, coloured and African people fear that their aspirations and needs may be ignored.
Once her ”opposition coalition” became the government, she forgot that once elected, you govern all the people, not just those who voted for you.
Since her election, she has blamed everyone and everything for her failure to attend to the real challenges facing the people of Cape Town. Maintaining a fragile alliance leaves her with little time to do the things 106 councillors elected her to do. In the end, it is the city that suffers.
It is not the ANC that forced Zille into this fragile coalition. And just because Zille has managed to form a government does not mean that all political activity should come to an end. This is not how it works in any democracy. Parties have a right to engage with each other and, if they aim to constitute an alternative government, that is their democratic right.
Many commentators have said that the ANC has no sovereign right to rule. While that may be true, by the same token, Zille has no supreme right to rule the city.
It was not the ANC that forced Zille to sign an agreement with the smaller parties that will leave the running of the city in the hands of people who might not necessarily be city councillors. The agreement states that municipal issues will first be discussed by a ”leadership committee”, where leaders of the participating parties will discuss ”any aspect relating to the functioning of the administration”, and then take it to council. It indicates that issues on which agreement cannot be reached within the leadership committee will not be tabled at the mayoral committee meetings or council meetings.
This makes local governance in the city a fallacy and council meetings a DA showroom.
It is not the ANC that ignored the appropriate legislation when the council convened on the request of only 60 councillors to discuss the extended contract of the city manager, while the Municipal Structures Act, 1998, requires that a council can meet ”if a majority of the councillors requests the speaker” calls such a sitting.
Now we have a city manager whose contract is in dispute, and with no clear court ruling on the validity of Wallace Mgoqi’s contract.
It is not the ANC that elected Zille mayor, and the ANC cannot be blamed for her shortcomings. As for ”problems” that she claims are caused by the ANC, these are entirely of her own doing. Zille should stop looking for excuses that aim to instil confidence in a coalition that is bound to fail.
James Ngculu is ANC Western Cape chairperson