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Council meeting cancelled in bid to stop one-seat councillor Colleen Makhubele’s Johannesburg power grab

Council meeting cancelled in bid to stop one-seat councillor Colleen Makhubele’s Johannesburg power grab
Ferial Haffajee
By Ferial Haffajee
8 Sep 2022
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Johannesburg acting city manager Bryne Maduka has cancelled a council meeting called for 13 September as lawyers’ letters fly about the status of councillor Colleen Makhubele. The Cope member insists she is now Speaker. The DA disagrees.

Johannesburg’s mayoral chains are worn by the Democratic Alliance’s Mpho Phalatse, but the ANC has the greatest number of seats and wants the city back. The party has reportedly promised the Speaker’s position to Colleen Makhubele, Cope’s only representative on the city council.

She appointed herself acting Speaker after the DA’s Vasco da Gama was ousted on 31 August, and her lawyers have said she has the right to do so. Using her assumed position, Makhubele has called a meeting for 13 September, where Phalatse is likely to face a motion of no confidence. 

The ANC, in a new alliance with the EFF, now has 120 seats in the 270-seat council. They need the support of 16 councillors from smaller parties to win back Johannesburg, which is on its knees despite Phalatse and her team’s efforts.


 

For the ANC’s Johannesburg game plan, read here.

Makhubele, a swashbuckling figure, is fronting the effort to change the government. See a profile by Queenin Masuabi here. Cope’s national leadership has said she is acting without a mandate, but the lone councillor, who got in on a proportional representation vote, is pushing ahead.



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Makhubele is called the “chair of chairs” in the council and got the post after the DA had to knit together an alliance of small parties to take over running the city of six million after the November 2021 municipal elections. 

It is an influential role, but the extent of its power is now the subject of lawyers’ letters flying between the warring parties who are members of the city’s governing coalition.

Makhubele is using the law — the Municipal Structures Act — to argue that when there is no Speaker, she assumes the role because she is the chairperson of committees (the official term for chair of chairs). But in a legal opinion obtained by the DA and sent to Makhubele, lawyers say she is not Speaker and can’t call a meeting.

“Councillor Vasco da Gama was removed as Speaker on Wednesday, 31 August 2022. He was not replaced at the Council meeting subsequent to his removal. There is currently no Speaker of Council,” said the DA. 

Because of this, only the city manager can call a council meeting, the lawyers said. But Makhubele’s lawyers fired right back, saying, “The specific right that our client enjoys by virtue of being Chairperson of Chairs is the right to become the Acting Speaker automatically…”

The saga has revealed the limits of coalition governments for citizens. Phalatse is fighting for her political life as mayor, as head of a party that got more than 482,000 votes in the last election, against Makhubele, whose Cope seat was won by just over 4,000 voters. 

But the ANC, with 620,289 votes, is in the opposition seats and is smarting at this. The fight about interpreting the Municipal Structures Act will likely end up in court as the city at the heart of the South African economy crumbles. DM

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