Cape Town mayor Helen Zille and Western Cape provincial minister of local government Richard Dyantyi are to hold further talks with Minister of Provincial and Local Government Sydney Mufamadi.
This follows a 90-minute meeting between the three at Mufamadi’s Cape Town office on Wednesday to discuss Dyantyi’s proposal to change the system of government in Cape Town.
The change — from a mayoral committee to an executive committee system — has been labelled by Zille as an African National Congress power grab, and will strip her of her current executive powers.
Her spokesperson Robert Macdonald said Mufamadi asked Zille and Dyantyi to set out their positions, which they did, Zille first.
Macdonald said she put on record that she needed formal reasons from Dyantyi before she could get a mandate on whether to participate in consultations with him, and said the October 26 deadline for consultation had to be reconsidered.
Dyantyi had restated his position — which has been that the move is aimed at broadening democracy.
Macdonald said it was agreed that Zille and Dyantyi would meet Mufamadi again, separately, on October 24.
”It’s the start of a process, I guess,” he said.
Zille, who is a member of the Democratic Alliance, and her party’s six coalition partners in the city government, have threatened to take the matter to the Constitutional Court if necessary.
They boycotted a consultative meeting arranged by Dyantyi in a city hotel on Tuesday.
Only the ANC and the Independent Democrats attended.
‘Great arrogance’
The ID on Tuesday accused Zille of arrogance and contempt for her decision not to attend the meeting arranged by Dyantyi.
The claim came from ID caucus leader Simon Grindrod, in an address to Dyantyi at the gathering.
Grindrod, whose party leader Patricia de Lille on Sunday apologised for backing an ANC mayor earlier this year and declared that her party would oppose Dyantyi’s move, said the ID believed it was very important to hear the minister’s position ”first hand”.
”The DA and their coalition partners have shown great arrogance and contempt in not attending as requested,” he said.
”On the one hand, Helen Zille complains that her democratically elected position is not being recognised. In the same breath she openly disrespects the office of a provincial minister.”
He also said the DA decision to stick to the executive mayoral system despite promising in their local government election manifesto to abolish it ”stinks to the high heavens of hypocrisy”.
The ID wanted an executive committee system — as in Dyantyi’s proposal — but not under these circumstances.
The ID would continue to fight for an executive committee through the ballot box, and not through the courts. — Sapa