Cape Town mayor Helen Zille and provincial Local Government and Housing Minister Richard Dyantyi have reached a compromise over the future of the city government in the Mother City, it was announced at a press conference called by national Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi at Parliament on Tuesday.
The seven party city administration led by the Democratic Alliance mayor — but excluding the African National Congress (ANC) -‒ will remain in place but the ANC will be given two more sub-council chairmanships, taking the number of sub-councils it chairs from five to seven.
The two levels of government — city and provincial — were at at loggerheads over Dyantyi’s proposal to change the executive mayoral system to a proportional executive committee system, which would have drawn the ANC into the city’s top management. The compromise — dubbed an agreement — effectively means that the ANC will remain on the opposition benches.
Zille, who said her working relationship with Dyantyi had been good before he had threatened to change the system, said that she was ”completely convinced” of the good faith of the national minister and that in future the ANC would not threaten her city government.
She said the agreement underscored the legitimacy of the multiparty city government and that the outcome of the election — which the seven parties won in March — would not be tampered with.
”The outcome of an election should not be open to negotiation,” she said.
Mufamadi dismissed the notion that a ”trade-off” had taken place between the mayor and the provincial minister and said he would prefer to see the agreement as ”a shared perspective” among the roleplayers in local, provincial and national government.
Mufamadi said the mayor and the provincial minister had displayed goodwill and willingness to work together during meetings with him. Common ground had been found in addressing the governance issues and ”to this end, the MEC [provincial minister] for Local Government will not proceed with the intended change in the type of government in the city of Cape Town.”
The two extra sub-councils — which Zille would result from boundary ”re-delimitation” — would ”deepen democracy in the city”, said Mufamadi.
Responding to Dyantyi’s remark that he would keep monitoring the city — to ensure that it responded to the needs of the poor in particular and those who felt marginalised — Mufamadi said that this was seen as ”adversarial” but should not be viewed in this light. Zille, also had the right to monitor developments at provincial and national government, he said.
Asked by I-Net Bridge whether he would consider encouraging the other five metropolitan councils — including Johannesburg and Tshwane — to develop mechanisms which drew in substantial representation of opposition parties on those council benches, he said he did not wish to dictate to them what system should transpire in those metros. All five are ruled by the ANC with sizeable DA opposition components.
Asked if his threatened interventions to the city government system had damaged the ANC, Dyantyi said he would not comment on that but that he was legally entitled to take such steps.
Mufamadi said he had acted as a go-between because there was a need to find ”a political modus operandi” to deal with matters ” of this kind”. ‒ I-Net Bridge