A special meeting of the Nelson Mandela Bay Council collapsed on Wednesday morning after a “mystery” appeal was filed earlier at the Gqeberha High Court which suspended the participation of the three Northern Alliance councillors.

This is the latest chapter in a bitter fight for control of the metro where the ANC and the DA can only rule through a coalition since neither won an outright majority in the November 2021 local government elections. The current coalition is led by the ANC.

The council drama is the latest in a series of recent coalition upheavals in South Africa. 

The DA’s speaker in the City of Johannesburg was voted out last week, which means the coalition is teetering. In Knysna, the DA-led coalition lost power to an ANC-led coalition.

Nelson Mandela Bay mayor Eugene Johnson tried to stop the council meeting from taking place earlier this week but her urgent application to the Gqeberha High Court was dismissed on the basis that it did not have sufficient grounds for urgency. Under law this cannot be appealed.

To form a majority government, a coalition must have 61 seats. The other parties in council are the Freedom Front Plus (FF+), the ACDP, the Defenders of the People and the Patriotic Alliance, with two seats each. The Good party, United Democratic Movement (UDM), African Independent Congress (AIC) and Abantu Integrity Movement (AIM) each have a single seat. The Northern Alliance (NA) is the largest of the small parties, with three seats. 

DA mayoral candidate Retief Odendaal and fellow councillors discuss the latest developments with city manager Noxolo Nqwazi. (Photo: Deon Ferreira)

The NA held the position of Speaker (Gary van Niekerk) and the position of MMC for water and infrastructure (Stag Mitchell) in the coalition government put together by the ANC. However, internal ructions saw Van Niekerk and Mitchell, along with councillor Bevan Brown, expelled from the party. Protracted litigation, with rulings in favour of the three councillors, followed, including the latest application by the three who had been attending council after convincing a judge to give an order allowing them to do so.

In August, the DA signed a coalition agreement with the ACDP, FF+, AIM, AIC, the PAC and the UDM.

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On Wednesday morning, though, not enough councillors turned up at the meeting for a quorum with councillors from the ANC, the EFF, the PAC, the Patriotic Alliance and a councillor from the Defenders of the People (DOP) being absent.

Death threat

The meeting scheduled for Wednesday morning was set to hear a motion of no confidence in Johnson, brought by the ACDP.

The DA caucus’ chief whip, Leander Kruger, said one of their councillors had received a death threat.

Lance Grootboom from the ACDP speaks during the council meeting. (Photo: Deon Ferreira)

City manager Noxolo Nqwazi then tried to adjourn the meeting, saying an appeal “stamped by the Chief Justice’s office” had suspended an order allowing the three NA councillors to participate in the meeting. 

Her announcement was met with fury from councillors. 

Read in Daily Maverick: “New coalition agreement signed in Nelson Mandela Bay in bid to unseat ANC-led government”

Lawrence Troon from Good warned that “whoever is busy with these tricks won’t get far”. “We are held at ransom by forces of darkness.” 

An emotional Mitchell, one of the NA councillors who had been kept on the sidelines, said it had been five or more months that they have been barred from participating in the council.

“There are sinister forces at play. I hope they will show their faces. But we know who they are. Nelson Mandela Bay deserves better. The time is up, we need a new direction,” he said. 

She refused to say who had brought the application for leave to appeal, but it is understood that it was herself and the municipality. 

After upset councillors then raised the point that a new government will remove her as city manager – her appointment has been a bone of contention in the municipality – she said she would not be insulted, and left.

The meeting was then adjourned for councillors to obtain copies of the court papers.

‘Every trick in the book’

Retief Odendaal, the DA’s mayoral candidate for Nelson Mandela Bay, said the ANC only managed to cling to power through frivolous court action.

“We remain committed to forming a coalition government and we are pulling out all the stops in a bid to unite all opposition parties to oust the ANC from power. The ANC will try every trick in the book to keep milking the city’s coffers dry – looting and corrupting as they go along.

City manager Noxolo Nqwazi leaves the meeting, saying she won’t be ‘insulted’. (Photo: Deon Ferreira)

“Our city is dirty, our streets are littered with potholes and streetlights are not working. Services are not being delivered and our residents suffer due to sewage running through and around their houses and places of business. We are in the grips of an extended drought and Day Zero is a very real possibility, but clean, potable water is running in the streets due to the administration’s inability to fix leaks,” he said.

Earlier in 2022 there was an attempt by former MEC for cooperative governance and traditional affairs Xolile Nqatha (he has since been reassigned to another portfolio) to change the municipal system in Nelson Mandela Bay and allow for one that will require greater participation by the DA and other big parties in the council. In his letter motivating for this change Nqatha used words like “lawlessness” and “chaos” to describe the city under Johnson, adding that she had lost control of the members of her mayoral committee who each operated like they were little mayors themselves. DM/MC