Capetonians eagerly awaiting the outcome of the bitter dispute between Democratic Alliance (DA) mayor Helen Zille and the African National Congress (ANC) over the city’s system of governance will have to wait a little longer.
Next week Zille will either declare a dispute with Local Government Minister Richard Dyantyi or Dyantyi will have to extend his October 26 deadline marking the end of the consultation process over changing the system of governance in the Mother City.
This week, Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi intervened and held a meeting with Zille and Dyantyi.
Dyantyi and the ANC want the mayoral committee system that is presently in place to be replaced by an executive committee system, which will force the city’s biggest political organisations to work together in one structure. Under this system the mayor’s role will become ceremonial.
Zille sees the move as an attempt by the ANC to regain control of the city, which it lost during the election in March this year.
After an hour-and-a-half meeting Mufamadi, Zille and Dyantyi emerged smiling, but saying very little except to announce a second round of talks next Tuesday, when Mufamadi will meet separately with both Zille and Dyantyi.
Depending on how these talks go, Zille will decide whether or not to seek council’s permission to declare a dispute with the local government on Wednesday. Zille said after the meeting that current talks will not prevent her from declaring a dispute because she has still not been informed of Dyantyi’s reasons for proposing the change.
If she declares a dispute, it will initiate a legal process aimed at preventing Dyantyi from pushing through the changes. It is within Dyantyi’s powers to do this.
When Dyantyi initially announced his intention to change the system he said the 30-day consultation process would end on October 26. Zille does not accept this deadline, arguing that she does not consider that the consultation process has been legitimate because the ANC has not explained its reasons for wanting to change the system of governance six months after it came into effect.
Prior to the meeting with Mufamadi, Dyantyi invited all 210 councillors to a meeting to discuss his proposal. Only ANC and Independent Democrats members attended the meeting while the DA, including Zille, received legal advice to boycott it.
The battle for control of the city claimed its first casualty this week when an ID councillor, David Sasman, openly opposed party leader Patricia de Lille because of her stance on the DA/ANC war.
De Lille’s party, which voted with the ANC in March, apologised this week for supporting the ANC and announced its full backing for Zille. Sasman said De Lille was sowing confusion and her political about-turn is a “desperate attempt to regain lost political ground”. De Lille said it was wrong of the ID to side with the ANC. “We should’ve stayed out of the DA/ANC war completely,” she said.