The state of the Mogale City Local Municipality was put under the spotlight on 6 August at Kid Maponya Primary School at Sanco Mogale City’s zonal council meeting.
3 August marks one year since the 2016 municipal elections that brought about sweeping changes in the country’s biggest metros.
As the chairperson of the South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco) Mogale City Zonal Task Team (ZTT), I attended the state of local governance round-table discussion in Johannesburg on 3 August.
Gauteng Human Settlements MEC, Paul Mashatile, described the results of last year’s municipal elections as a ‘watershed’ moment in the history of developmental local government in South Africa.
He argued that the establishment of coalition governments in the country’s biggest three metros, including Mogale City, undermined their governance and political stability, which I totally agree with.
Frankly speaking, it was painful and disturbing that Mogale City, the home of the ANC, had been lost to the DA coalition.
Mogale City was one of the most highly contested areas during the elections, with many a community saying that the governing party’s disappointing show had been a long time coming following years of political infighting and [in]stability, which affected their service delivery.
Political analysts and commentators, including one of our own, Thabile Mange, and I had all written a series of letters to the News shortly after the Independent Electoral Commission confirmed that the ANC [in Mogale City] had scored 38 seats, the DA had 27, the EFF had nine, the FF Plus had two and the IFP had one.
The results ushered in coalition governments in a number of municipalities, not only in Gauteng but also throughout the country. In fact, it can be argued that it is the municipalities in Gauteng that have experienced the most radical change as a result of the recent local government elections, said Mashatile.
To me, these elections brought about a new era, new opportunities and new challenges for the local authorities and Mogale City’s municipality was not excluded from this evolution.
It is common cause that all three Gauteng metros and Mogale City have hung councils and this situation seems to have wrong-footed us, as hung municipalities are inherently unstable.
The DA, with the assistance of smaller parties, managed to wrest control over crucial metropolitan areas from the ANC.
Given these unfortunate developments, which threaten to cripple the municipality’s ability to render service, Sanco had intervened with a view to dealing with a number of anomalies that could potentially collapse the functioning of the council of Mogale City.
