The motion of no confidence against Panyaza Lesufi came a week before the G20 Leaders' Summit.
Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi has survived a motion of no confidence brought by the DA.
On Friday, political parties in the Gauteng legislature debated Lesufi’s competence and track record.
However, most major parties in the legislature were against Lesufi’s removal. There were only 24 votes in favour of Lesufi’s removal, while 54 were against it.
This motion was brought after the Public Protector found that Lesufi had illegally created the Gauteng Crime Prevention Wardens, also known as Amapanyaza.
There are around 9 000 of these wardens. But the programme has now been disbanded.
Lesufi announced that these wardens will be “repurposed”, with some set to be retrained to become Gauteng Traffic Wardens.
The ANC, EFF and MK party appeared united in repelling the motion of no confidence.
But the DA believes Lesufi acted outside the law, even though he was advised against forming the Gauteng Crime Wardens.
ANC defends ‘mad man’ Lesufi
The ANC’s Lesego Makhubela defended Lesufi, describing him as an innovative leader and a “mad man” of modern South Africa.
“You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness in this case it comes from non-conformity. You had the courage to turn your back on old formulas and reinvent the future.
“Premier Lesufi you are the mad man of our time; you refused when people were dying in Gauteng… you refused to use old formulas to confront criminal cartels. You came with new ideas to confront these particular criminals.
“The DA has insulted these 9 000 wardens. From inception they called their uniforms pleb uniforms, cheap uniforms. These were men and women who were transplanted from CPFs. These are men and women who were taken from the streets of our townships, fighting crime already, and they were brought into the Gauteng government to fight this particular crime,” he said.
Other parties criticise DA
The EFF’s Moshe Koma, said the DA should have solved its problems with the ANC behind closed doors since the two parties are already in a national coalition.
“The people of Gauteng must also know that it is disingenuous for the DA to call for this motion. It is also a logical contradiction because the very same DA that wishes to call out the ANC today has successfully run the City of Tshwane into the ground.
“As such there is no DA that can behave and present itself as an abetter of moral and political correctness,” he said.
The MK party’s Nomthandazo Meso said the DA is being vindictive towards Lesufi.
“The motion brought by the DA today is a modern-day coup d’etat. It is an attempt to force the premier of Gauteng to include the DA in Gauteng’s government of provincial unity through the back door. As uMkhonto weSizwe, we are here to make sure that does not see the day,” she said.
DA responds
But DA leader Solly Msimang says Lesufi has failed on multiples levels as the leader of the provincial government.
“Let’s put the facts into perspective. The most people that are not getting services at this point in time are black people. The most people that are not getting the services that you claim you are providing are black people, and most of the black people that are suffering are coming from our townships,” he said.
Msimanga said the Gauteng government had failed to address issues of corruption, infrastructure, water outages and dysfunctionality in municipalities.
The ACDP is the only political party that abstained from the vote.
ActionSA, Bosa, PA and IFP voted against the motion. In total 54 legislators out of 80 were in favour of Lesufi keeping his job.
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