Dyanti Initiates Cape Town Council Restructuring - ANC Really Really Sore Losers 9
It’s official. Western Cape MEC for Local Government Richard Diyanti has notified Cape Town Mayor Helen Zille thay he intends to reorganise the Cape Town council into an executive committee type system. This system would make the mayor largely ceremonial and place most of the power in a 10 person committee which would comprise of the DA (4 seats), the ANC (4 seats) and the ID (2 seats) although the linked article mentions it might be DA:4/5 ANC:4 ID:1 ACDP:1(?), with the smaller parties (ACDP who may or may not get a seat, FF+, AMP) shut out.
Prior to their election victory the DA claimed preference for the executive committee model when it seemed possible the ID would join them in a coalition. When the ID decided to back the ANC in the mayoral vote the DA were basically left with no choice but to stay with the executive mayoral system or face defeat.
Diyanti justifies the move saying that an executive committee would be more ‘stable’ and the executive committee would be more ‘inclusive’. Which begs the question. So when is Tony Leon (or Joe Seremans considering the ANC’s distate for Leon) getting his ‘inclusive’ cabinet position? Sure the ANC received 69% of the national vote but with the DA that would be an even more inclusive 80%! If Diyanti was so worried about stability he might want to recommend that floor crossing be scrapped as it’s probably the single greatest cause of upheaval in local councils (usually in the ANC’s favour though).
Here’s a telling quote from the ANC’s Max Ozinsky:
The recent local government election did not produce a clear winner and at the moment only half of the voters are represented in the mayoral committee, leaving the other half outside.
Will someone please call a whaaaaambulance? Perhaps someone should remind Max that the ANC were the ones who introduced the executive mayoral committee system in the first place and during their time in power excluded the DA from it. He also doesn’t mention that every single other council in the Western Cape uses the executive mayoral system currently. Max also somehow implies that the ANC is somehow totally shut out of the political process which is not true as while they are not on the mayoral committee they still have 88 votes on the council and also does not consider such facts that the budget that was passed in May was largely drawn up by the previous ANC committee and that the new city manager appointed by the DA, Achmat Ebrahim, was a member of the ANC’s management team.
Business Day had an opinion piece yesterday that called such a move as smelling of ANC desperation. The guys at Commentary say it show’s the disrespect the ANC shows towards the democratic process. DA Mal, who comments on the Commentary thread, seems suprisingly upbeat and indicates he believes this will probably be killed in the courts and should it go through the ANC will suffer in subsequent provincial and local elections.
Now what about the ID? Well give them credit they have been consistent from even before the elections that they preferred an executive committee system and obviously they stand to gain if this change goes through. However if you consider the beatdown the ID took when it sided with the ANC during the council mayoral vote and the near revolt amongst it’s members they will have to be be very careful not to fuel further uprising if they are seen as helping the ANC in this. If the reforms do indeed go through I wouls assume that the ID would be siding more with the DA than the ANC, especially after the DA successfully picked up the council seat in Tafelsig after the ID councillor (Sheval Arendse who then ran under the DA) resigned from the ID in protest of their support of the ANC’s mayoral candidate.
Finally I’d like to mention that as of a month ago in the Eastern Cape, three of the largest municipalities were so rife with infighting in the ANC that they have yet to actually appoint mayors. And yet I have yet to hear of the Eastern Cape provincial government intervening there despite the complete chaos and shambles those councils are in when compared to Cape Town.
Speaking party-politically, the first problem is to defend the city government. The DA will always first pronounce on the accepted and proven legitimacy of the multi-party government.
But a far more important problem at hand is our mission to defend the principle of democracy as we South Africans understand it. And we’re not going to neglect that.
Rather, we are going to use this opportunity to make a practical stand on the issue.
There’s no point in deferring to democracy in theory if one doesn’t back it up in practice. Both the DA and the ANC make a claim to be democratic – but now we will see. And we will also see whether the courts prefer our version of democracy rather than the ANC’s; and the outcome of this challenge to coalition democracy will become a new frontier, pioneered by real conflict between our parties, for democracy in South African history.
So I feel we should welcome this challenge from the ANC. The outcome will be definitive, in at least three senses. In a legal sense, we will test the limits of this law that the ANC chooses to abuse. In a political sense we will establish whether or not elected coalition governments are an accepted outcome of our democracy. And most immediately this will give the people of the Western Cape another demonstration of what the ANC really is; and I believe the lesson will not be lost.
By their fruits ye shall know them.
Over what period of time will this process play out? If it’s not anything short of a year, which is possible if you consider the legal challeneges that will surely form part of the process, then the case the jusitification of ‘stability’ becomes even more ridiculous. How stable is it to change the system of government two years away from the World Cup, which is the justification for the ‘stability’ justification.
Farell quoted: “This system would make the mayor largely ceremonial and place most of the power in a 10 person committee which would comprise of the DA (4 seats), the ANC (4 seats) and the ID (2 seats) although the linked article mentions it might be DA:4/5 ANC:4 ID:1 ACDP:1(?), with the smaller parties (ACDP who may or may not get a seat, FF+, AMP) shut out.”
Given that the DA won 42%, ANC 38.5% and ID 11% in the local government elections, if seats are split proportionately between the three parties, the DA would get 5, ANC 4 and ID only 1 (not 2). I’ve read the 4-4-2 split and I do not see how the ID can get 2 seats if it only won 11%. Under a first past the post system the DA would be entitled to the fifth seat before the ID would get a second seat. In any event it would seem more logical to give the ACDP one seat even though it got 3% than to give a second seat to the ID. Could someone elaborate on how the Exco would allocate seats as there should be some clarity of what the proportional breakdown is under this system.
As far as I am concerned Zille probably doesn’t have to worry about retaining the mayor post as the ID’s Simon Ginrod has said the ID would back Zille if the exco is formed. There is no possible way for the ANC and the ID to form a majority on the exco as such exco could easily be removed by the full council in a no-confidence motion as Zille still enjoys majority support in the council. There is no way that the ANC could take control of the exco with the ID as they are together short three seats in the council. Given that fact the position of the ANC in negotiating for the four seats on the exco looks weak as the DA with the support of the ID would be able to keep the ANC from taking any of the critical portfolios such as the one responsible for public administration and tenders.
Law requires that there are no less than three exco members, and no more than ten. It’s ambiguous whether the mayor’s ex officio membership of the exco counts towards the total, but until this point it has been tacitly accepted that she doesn’t count towards the total.
The ‘right thing to do’, in the event that a executive committee replaces the executive mayor, is probably to have an exco of nine members plus the mayor – four ANC, four DA and one ID, plus the mayor – as this fairly divides the popular vote. (Gonna kick myself in the teeth for this kind of logic, some day…) There is no absolute necessity to have ten members, so long as all the necessary government jobs get done.
But the really right thing to do is to let the majority opinion prevail. I don’t fundamentally care that the Africa Muslim Party represents only 3% of the vote. I don’t care that the United Democratic Movement represents only 1% of the vote. Their constituents contribute to the city and are entitled to their say in how the city is run. And it’s clear that their elected reps can also contribute to the city. It’s to the advantage of their constituents that these parties join the present government – and very, very, very well done to them for being so astute.
So this is NOT an unrepresentative government, Ozinsky. It is simply unrepresentative of the ANC. To which I, and the rest of the world’s democrats, including the ANC in other parts of the country, say: tough luck.
Kevin: It’s true that Zille would probably retain her status as mayor, however under the executive committee it will largely be a ceremonial role so I’m not sure how keen she would be to still be mayor.
Well that is a choice she will have to make. Any of the other 90 DA councillors will be more than happy to have her job. What I do not like about Helen Zille is her need to cast everything in black and white and her unwillingness to cooperate with the provincial government. I think that she need to tone down her rhetoric and accept a system that the DA long campaigned in favor of. That would be in the best interests of long term stability in Cape Town is the need for consensus governance when none of the parties won the election outright and we have a hung council.
Sure the DA got the most votes in Cape Town but the ANC still controls the Western Cape provincial government as it does the other eight as well as the national government. The arguments put forward by the MEC Richard Dyantyi are not unreasonable. It would be preferable to have 93% representation than to have only 50% at present in Zille’s coalition. The DA-led coalition is fragile as it only has a majority of 2 seats in the full council. Zille’s coalition is also tenuous and subject to the whims of just two members of her coalition walking out and causing her coalition government to collapse. Given such risks that can happen at any time would it not be better to opt for a system of collective consensus decision making that would present itself if the system were changed to an exco. Certainly both foreign and local investors in the city would prefer that to a weak coalition administration that can change at any time, hence the need to get rid of the mayco and replace it with the exco. Alot is at stake in Cape Town right now with the 2010 World Cup and the investment the it would bring to the CBD.
I do not care that the ANC has a mayco system in the rest of the country or that the other Western Cape municipalities still do although if the DA wants to argue it then the MEC should logically change the system in the other 29 municpalities. I am in favor of this too.
KwaZulu-Natal has not opted for a mayco system and uses the collective exco system in all of it’s municipalities including Durban. Durban also happens to be the best run municipality in the country. So I thin it is in the interests of all parties to do the same in the Western Cape which is the only other province in SA with a significant opposition.
What Cape Town cannot afford is continuing to have an unstable city administration.
KZN is kind of a special case as it’s the only remaining province where political squabbles can still be settled with bullets.
That being said I don’t buy the justification that we need to be forced to have ‘91%’ represented on an executive committee. That’s not how a democracy works. Having the ANC/ID on the executive committee I don’t think will make things any more stable especially considering that any party in the smaller coalition that did leave it would be just be removing themselves from a position of authority.
I’m also not sure why Cape Town’s government is thought to be unstable. It’s continually vulnerable to destabilisation by the ANC rocking the boat – but the coalition’s survival this far rather demonstrates its strength than its weakness.
Next up: Helen wants a snap election. Interesting. I can see that the DA and other non-ANC and non-ID parties would do well from a snap election.
But it’s not legal. The Municipal Systems Act prohibits an election before two years have passed since the last one.
All one can say is that Helen is appealing for the interests of democracy to prevail, rather than executive fiat. But an election is not going to happen.