Nelson Mandela Bay mayor resigns amid plan to swop jobs with ANC deputy mayor

31 Oct 2024

The executive mayor of the Nelson Mandela Bay metro, Gary van Niekerk, has resigned. The deputy executive mayor, Babalwa Lobishe, has also tendered her resignation. It is understood that there is an agreement that they will be voted into each other’s jobs.

The executive mayor of Nelson Mandela Bay, Gary van Niekerk, has resigned, as has the deputy mayor, Babalwa Lobishe.

It is understood that they will just swap jobs, but their re-election has been delayed as council whips have called for time to deliberate.

Van Niekerk still faces serious allegations of fraud after he allegedly unlawfully employed an attorney using council funds to defend his previously held position as Speaker.

The resignations come as the city finds itself in crisis with countless electricity outages, billions of rand in damage, and thousands of people being displaced due to a second flood in the past few months. Van Niekerk and Lobishe were also both in charge when a warning was ignored that crucial electricity pylons in the city were about to collapse. These pylons collapsed, causing millions of rand in damage to the economy and leaving a large part of the city without electricity. At the time, Van Niekerk left Lobishe in charge and went to China with Eastern Cape Premier Oscar Mabuyane.

The MEC for cooperative governance and traditional affairs in the province, Zolile Williams, sharply criticised the metro last week for failing to clean stormwater drains on time, contributing to the floods.

Emergency repairs

The two resignations also came after the city was forced to shut down electricity in one of the metro’s key industrial areas for emergency repairs.

The city’s tourism is in crisis due to ongoing crime in the Humewood and Summerstrand areas.

DA leader in the Eastern Cape, Andrew Whitfield, said they had had some conversations with the ANC over a “super coalition”, but after the ANC violated their agreement in Pretoria to first form “stability pacts” in the metros, their discussions about Nelson Mandela Bay came to an end as well.

Whitfield said some of the smaller parties in the metro were playing the two big parties off against each other, and their rent-seeking behaviour did not make for stable governance.

The Nelson Mandela Bay Civil Society Coalition has been urging the DA and the ANC to form a stable government for months.

Van Niekerk lasted longer than most mayors and completed more than a year in the position since he unseated the DA’s Retief Odendaal.

The Nelson Mandela Bay Civil Society Coalition has called on the DA and the ANC for months to form a stable government in the province and end the coalitions’ constant reconfiguration. DM

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Emergency repairs