Staff Reporter.
The Mangaung council elected Mxolisi Siyonzana as the new mayor on Monday, and Councillor Mapaseka Mothibi-Nkoane was elected the council’s new speaker.
Siyonzana, a staunch ally of suspended ANC Secretary-General Ace Magashule, was the speaker of the council before the ANC’s interim provincial committee selected him as its preferred mayoral candidate.
He resigned from his position as speaker last week in anticipation of his appointment.
Although there were 88 councillors present, 87 cast ballots with Siyonzana winning 57 of those votes.
The metro council had been without a mayor since a vote of no confidence was passed against fraud and corruption accused Olly Mlamleli in August last year.
The battle to remove Mlamleli gained momentum in March last year when a second, failed motion of no confidence was brought against her.
The opposition parties and some ANC regional leaders in Mangaung – the biggest ANC region in the Free State – had blamed Mlamleli for the municipality’s downgrading to junk status by Moody’s rating agency.
Mlamleli was elected mayor in the August 2016 national municipal elections, following her stint as Free State MEC for Human Settlements under the then premier Magashule.
After being in office for less than two years, in June 2018 the EFF filed its first motion of no confidence against her. In their motion, the party cited that that under Mlamleli’s leadership, the auditor-general gave the municipality a qualified audit opinion.