ANC breaks deadlock: Outside candidate to fill critical Impendle mayor vacancy
KZN ANC Coordinator Mike Mabuyakhulu said his leadership and Impendle municipality councillors have agreed to have the mayor from outside
Image: TUMI PAKKIES
The ANC-led Impendle municipality outside Pietermaritzburg will finally elect a new mayor after the party councillors agreed to an outside candidate.
The meeting is scheduled to take place on Friday.
The 10-seat municipality has been without a mayor since July last year after Buyisani Mlaba was ousted through a vote of no confidence. The motion was filed by the EFF and all ANC councillors, except the mayor, abstained.
The agreement was confirmed by ANC provincial coordinator Mike Mabuyakhulu who said his leadership and the councillors met on Monday and agreed to allow a candidate from outside the municipality to be elected a mayor. He said as a result of their engagement, the Speaker Sizwe Ndlela tendered his resignation immediately on Monday to pave the way for a new candidate first to be sworn in as councillor before being appointed as a mayor.
"We have reached an agreement with our caucus to elect a mayor from outside the current caucus so the meeting will take place on Friday," said Mabuyakhulu.
Several attempts to elect a new mayor by the ANC provincial leadership have failed. The ANC reportedly wanted to bring in someone from outside, however, the councillors resisted, allegedly demanding that the new mayor be appointed from within. This led to a deadlock. The ANC has six councillors while EFF and IFP have two apart.
All ANC councillors except Speaker Ndlela are ward councillors so for the ANC leadership to bring an outside candidate, Ndlela had to resign. He has been refusing which resulted in the stalling of the process to elect a new mayor from outside since July last year.
The ANC’s expected election of a mayor on Friday is in line with the KwaZulu-Natal Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) who issued a directive to the council to elect the mayor by Thursday (today). Last week, Cogta MEC Reverend Thulasizwe Buthelezi visited the financially struggling municipality.
The MEC’s visit was prompted by the municipality’s failure to pay workers their salaries. Buthelezi cited the absence of the mayor as one of the main reasons for the municipality’s financial collapse and directed the council to elect a new mayor.
willem.phungula@inl.co.za