Durban — After failing politically and legally to hold the ANC-led coalition accountable in eThekwini, former deputy mayor Philani Mavundla has resigned as a councillor.
The Abantu Batho Congress (ABC) founder said he submitted his resignation letter to municipality speaker Thabani Nyawose on Friday.
Speaking to the Daily News on Tuesday, Mavundla said he felt he should leave the city to focus on removing the ANC as the provincial ruling party in next year’s general elections.
He said he would fight to be a kingmaker in the coalition that would ensure that the ANC was out in the cold.
“In the local government elections, we received 25 seats in different municipalities in the province and we became the kingmaker in eThekwini, so I want to fight hard to do the same in the legislature,“ said Mavundla.
He denied that he wanted to return to Greytown and take up the mayorship in Umvoti Local Municipality, saying it was not true since his party coalition with the IFP was doing well there. His party was rewarded with a deputy mayor position for keeping the ANC out of power in that municipality.
Despite his soured relationship with the ANC in eThekwini, he said his party had no intention of recalling its deputy mayor in the ANC-led coalition in Mziwabantu Local Municipality in Harding on the lower South Coast.
Among the reasons he cited for his resignation were the corruption and failures of the ANC in eThekwini. He said when he decided to help the ANC to retain power at the time, he had a genuine belief that the ANC would be persuaded to join his cause in championing the interests of the people of eThekwini by accelerating service delivery, holding officials and office-bearers accountable as well as seeing to the real and true emancipation of “our” people.
He said he had sadly realised this was not to be as the people of eThekwini had borne witness when he was removed for pursuing this very cause. The former deputy mayor reiterated his regret for helping the ANC when the people had chosen to remove it from power in the 2021 local government elections.
Mavundla said one of his highlights was to find that the city’s 27 wastewater treatment works had been run to complete failure. He said this particular failure of the ANC-led municipality had cost ratepayers millions of rand a year.
“The city’s water and sanitation debilitated infrastructure is a ticking time bomb which ought to be the city’s spending priority.
“Coupled with the water and sanitation crisis is wasteful expenditure in excess of hundreds of millions of rand due to unfunded mandates such as hostels, clinics, the expanded public works programme, as well as libraries, to name a few,” the statement read.
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