Sixth mayor in three years for Beaufort West – this time from the DA – aims to fix service delivery

Josias “Sias” Reynolds from the Democratic Alliance (DA) was elected as the new Beaufort West mayor on Thursday, 4 July during a special council sitting. His party now runs the municipality with an outright majority for the first time. 

Reynolds told Daily Maverick on Thursday afternoon that a big task lay ahead of him to “try to alleviate all the service delivery problems in Beaufort West… But I am confident that we will take small steps at a time and hopefully move in the right direction.”

Read more in Daily Maverick: Beaufort West’s mayoral chains up for grabs in by-elections

During three by-elections in June, the DA won all three vacant seats and gained an outright majority in the council. The party took the seats left vacant by the Patriotic Alliance (two seats) and the ANC (one seat). 

Read more in Daily Maverick: DA snatches outright control of Beaufort West, crushes competition in Cape Town wards 

In addition to Reynolds taking the mayoral chain, Georgina Duimpies was elected as deputy mayor and Japie van der Linde as Speaker.

Daylin Mitchell, the DA’s constituency head for Beaufort West, said, “Developments today usher in a turning point for the municipality and the people of Beaufort West. For years, the municipality has been mired [in] mismanagement and corruption, but with Mayor Reynolds and the DA team at the helm, we will work to turn things around and ensure good, clean governance and excellent service delivery for all residents in the municipality.”

Reynolds first took his post as a councillor in the Karoo municipality’s Ward 2 following the 2021 local government elections.

He said: “I think Beaufort West to me is a close-knit community where everybody knows and cares about each other… but also in the same sense it’s small enough, but it’s also big enough to be a big role player in the greater Karoo area financially.”

He aims to set short-term goals to address service delivery issues.

“We have to get the service delivery in Beaufort West right,” said the new mayor.

“And this will hopefully call on developers and people who want to have a place to come to develop their businesses and to start businesses… If everything works properly in a town, that is hopefully the end goal.”

“If I can be naughty and say that we as the DA caucus don’t want to build a Dubai,” said Reynolds, referring to former mayor Ashley Sauls’ proposed name change from Beaufort West to Dubai West, which caused an uproar. 

“We want things to function properly and this will lead to economic growth in Beaufort West,” he said. 

Three years, six mayors