ANC surrenders Pretoria to DA without any fight

The DA regained control of the city of Tshwane uncontested on Tuesday, after the ANC, the biggest party in council, failed to field candidates.

Former council speaker Katlego Mathebe was the first to be elected unopposed on Tuesday afternoon. Mayor Randall Williams returned to his position, also unopposed.

This comes as the ANC anticipated a loss for its candidates after the EFF ganged up with Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA to topple the ruling party in Ekurhuleni and Johannesburg on Monday.

Early on Tuesday, Mashaba maintained that his party would again vote for the DA in Tshwane in a bid to keep the ANC out of power.

In the lead-up to Tuesday’s council meeting, the ANC had indicated that it was going to nominate Frans Boshielo to contest against Williams. But Aaron Maluleke, former ANC chief whip, told the sitting that the ANC would not be participating further in the election of office bearers.

ANC Tshwane chairperson, Kgosi Maepa, following the results, said his party took a conscious decision not to contest because they saw that the other parties were going to “gang up” against the ANC.

“This is a cocktail of problems that are going to come. They are ganging up against the ANC (and are going to cause) problems that are going to cause confusion in the city,” said Maepa.

He said the ANC had “seen this movie before”.

Maepa said the ANC would not ask for support from parties that were later going to demand things that the ANC did not have.

“We lose nothing as the ANC in Tshwane, we have been in this process before,” he said.

Williams said he was not expecting to be elected unopposed but was not surprised.

“What we have seen happen yesterday in other metro cities in Gauteng and also what happened this morning in Mogale City, the DA also had their mayoral candidate elected as executive mayor,” said Williams.

He said the result was, however, pleasing but came with a lot of responsibility for a city in trouble.

Williams called for parties to work together to deliver services.

He said up until Tuesday morning, his party was not sure that it had enough numbers to retain the municipality.

Williams said there was still no formal coalition agreement in Tshwane but he was planning to announce his mayoral committee next week.

—TimesLIVE

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