By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) Gauteng leader Solly Msimanga said the party will not abandon the residents of Tshwane to the chaos caused by the African National Congress (ANC) , enabled by ActionSA, which is set to benefit the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).
Msimanga and ousted Tshwane mayor Cilliers Brink held a media briefing to outline the way forward.
Brink was removed from office on Thursday after the ANC and ActionSA joined forces, with the help of the EFF, to vote him out in a motion of no confidence.
Those against were the DA, Freedom Front Plus and the African Christian Democratic Party. One councillor from the Inkatha Freedom Party abstained.
Msimanga has announced that his party will be presenting Brink as its preferred mayoral candidate, as it hopes to engage with the ANC.
“We’ll field Cilliers Brink as mayoral candidate to continue making progress in Tshwane. Yesterday, during media interviews, Herman Mashaba told journalists they had a deal with the ANC to make Nasiphi Moya the mayor. This was immediately contradicted by the ANC in their own public statements, proving a point we made that he was a useful idiot and has been duped to collapse a working government that included his own party,” Msimanga said.
He said as for the ANC, DA leaders made every attempt to persuade the national leadership of the ANC, whom they were informed has the authority to do so, to withdraw the motion of no confidence in Brink.
“This would have enabled the future of the City of Tshwane to be deliberated under conditions of relative stability, while the existing Mayoral Committee continued to perform its work. Had the ANC acceded to this request, there would have been time and an opportunity to devise a settlement in the best interest of the people of Tshwane and Gauteng,” Msimanga said.
However he pointed out that the DA will attempt to engage with the ANC and other political parties.
“We will still be engaging with the ANC, whether we are doing it at the national level or local level, we will still attempt to reach out to them at the provincial level to see if we are able to find each other,” he said.
Msimanga denied that the DA was in secret negotiations to remove ActionSA from the City of Tshwane.
“They walked away from us, not the other way around,” he said.
Brink said the ANC had been requested to withdraw the motion of no confidence so that the future of the city could be discussed.
“The ANC had an opportunity to withdraw the motion of no confidence. It would not have amounted to a coalition agreement or a stability pact. However, it could have given us time in a calm and reflective mode to consider the future,” he said.
Brink said he was disappointed by the ANC’s actions.
He also promised that the party will ensure that disciplinary process against the Rooiwal five, including the City’s Labour Court application to have them dismissed, is not reversed, also promising to ensure that the project to bring clean water to Hammanskraal is not sabotaged.