Durban — eThekwini Municipality is expected to finally fill the position of Municipal Public Accounts Committee chairperson (MPAC) after it has been vacant for four months, following the axing of Dr Makhosi Khoza by ActionSA.
Municipal speaker Thabani Nyawose told the Daily News on Thursday that the chairperson will be elected in a full council meeting at the end of July.
The DA and other parties have been pushing for filling of the position, which DA whip Thabani Mthethwa again raised with the speaker in the recent whips’ meeting. Mthethwa also said he had received the same answer from the speaker when he asked about the filling of the position. He said his party would field the best candidate for the job.
The IFP’s Mdu Nkosi, who supported the DA’s candidate, Andre Beetge, for the position as a coalition partner, said the candidate’s name would be discussed towards the end of the month, saying it was still too early to discuss the issue.
On the side, small parties said they wanted to retain the position as per the agreement they had reached with the ANC during the inauguration, where 16 small parties agreed to help it to retain power. The chairperson of the small parties bloc, NFP councillor Zandile Myeni, said they wanted to keep the post as part of the coalition agreement, saying the negotiations would soon resume on the matter.
Myeni said as per the coalition agreement, the ANC was to give the small parties a deputy mayor’s position, a seat in the executive committee, an ethics committee chairperson as well as the MPAC – all of which it honoured – except the ethics committee, which it gave to one of its councillors.
In the 11-member committee, the ANC has five, the DA three, IFP 1, EFF 1 and ActionSA 1. In terms of municipal policy, the MPAC chairperson must be elected within the committee, but through a full council vote.
The position became vacant after ActionSA fired Khoza. Her election to the post, which was supported by the ANC, came as a surprise since her party was in a bloc led by the DA.
This angered ActionSA boss, Herman Mashaba, and she was subsequently removed as both councillor and a member of the party.
Khoza’s acceptance of ANC support for the post raised questions about whether she had voted for the bloc during the inauguration, where the DA’s Nicole Graham lost the mayoral chain to Mxolisi Kaunda.
Since Khoza’s departure from the committee and ActionSA’s sour relationship with the ANC, it was highly unlikely that a new chairperson would again come from ActionSA.
Myeni said the bloc would meet and forward their candidate’s name to the ANC, but it would mean that the party had to sacrifice one councillor to accommodate the small parties.
The municipality’s chief whip, Thembo Ntuli, who is the ANC’s acting regional chairperson while Zandile Gumede has had to step aside, has previously said engagements with coalition partners were ongoing for various issues, but said like in any other relationship, problems would always arise and be resolved.
Daily News