Residents of Ekurhuleni could wake up on Friday to an overhaul of the city’s administration as ActionSA has successfully submitted a motion of no confidence against the metro’s mayor, Sivuyile Ngodwana.
According to ActionSA caucus leader Siyanda Makhubo, his party was confident their motion would be successful.
“We have the numbers! This will be successful,” a confident Makhubo said on Tuesday.
The party submitted the motion against Ngodwana last week, accusing him of poor performance.
The motion follows a row over the auditor-general’s report into the city’s finances, with council members accusing the mayor and MMC for finance Nkululeko Dunga of hiding the report.
Makhubo said following the programming committee meeting, which was held last Friday, the party was one step closer to seeing the desperately needed wholesale changes to Ekurhuleni’s top political leadership, as the motion had successfully gone through.
“Mayor Ngodwana will forever be known in Ekurhuleni as the ‘puppet mayor’ who allowed the EFF to wreak havoc on the city’s finances and administration. His protection of councillor Dunga, the EFF MMC for finance, who has been embroiled in several scandals over the past year, was particularly damning. ActionSA urges political parties to put aside their differences and support this motion to save our city.
“To this end, ActionSA is reaching out to all political parties that are willing to create political stability in the metro, get the institutional review completed, stabilise the city’s finances, and begin rolling out service delivery to our communities,” he added.
Makhubo continued to say that under the current mayor Ngodwana’s leadership, the metro had witnessed the city’s finances deteriorate, service delivery grind to a halt, and a waste crisis which continued to plague communities.
This, he said, was due to to the mayor’s ignorance and his failures to implement council resolutions on hijacked buildings, which continued to pose a health and safety risk for unsuspecting residents.
“ActionSA is very confident that all like-minded political parties will vote positively to remove this ANC-EFF unholy alliance and get the City of Ekurhuleni back to work.”
A majority of other parties in the council seem to be for the motion, which would see the mayor being removed from office.
However, the EFF is not yet clear as to whether they will vote with other political parties to remove the mayor, as the party’s MMC for finance, Dunga, did not respond to enquiries sent to him.
Meanwhile, ANC caucus leader Jongizizwe Dlabathi told The Star that they were unable to state the party’s position at the moment.
“The ANC is in the process of discussing its position on the motion,” Dlabathi explained.
The no-confidence motion is set to be heard on Thursday.
The Star