The opposition coalition secured a 61-seat majority in the 120-seat council when the PA announced at the beginning of August that it was pulling out of its second coalition agreement with the DA.

A high-level delegation including PA leader Gayton McKenzie met in the Bay at the beginning of August and announced that the party would be petitioning the speaker, Jonathan Lawack, to hold a special council meeting to hear fresh motions of no confidence against Lawack, Trollip, chief whip Werner Senekal as well as for the removal of current portfolio heads and the reinstatement of the position of deputy mayor.

Opposition parties then met in Braamfontein where they voted on positions, with the PA’s Marlon Daniels chosen as the mayoral candidate and the UDM’s Mongameli Bobani elected as the candidate for deputy mayor.

However, the EFF took exception to this, with the party’s national spokesperson, Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, saying it would never support a PA mayoral candidate, calling the PA a party of “thugs” and “unrepentant fraudsters”.

McKenzie responded in a lengthy letter acknowledging the animosity between himself and EFF leader Julius Malema and claimed the EFF had no respect for the democratic process, as Daniels had been fairly elected as the candidate, but said the PA was prepared to remove their candidacy for the mayoral position.

“Honour is everything, and we shall honour our signature on the document we signed for the removal of the current DA government,” McKenzie wrote. DM