Jason Felix and
Siyavuya Mzansti
TOP jobs are up for grabs at some DA run municipalities in the Western Cape as mayors and mayoral committee members are to be deployed to Parliament or legislature.
DA leader Helen Zille said yesterday mayoral committees of the three municipalities would be reshuffled.
Breede River Valley Municipality mayor Basil Kivedo and Drakenstein (Paarl) mayor Gesie van Deventer are to be deployed to the legislature while Cape Town Mayco member for Human Settlements Tandeka Gqada is heading to Parliament. Gqada was 43rd on the DA’s national list. The party won 89 parliamentary seats in the elections.
“We will have to get very good candidates for those municipalities because both Drakenstein and Breede Valley are very challenging and running them is not easy,” Zille said.
She said the party’s electoral colleges which elected new mayoral candidates were already in place.
The legislature will have 26 DA members to be sworn in on May 21. Kivedo who served as the mayor since 2011 said he felt humble “to be moving forward in politics”.
“The results show that we are the accepted party in the Western Cape and for me to fail the people of this province would be a disaster,” he said.
Kivedo, who was ranked number 6 on the DA’s provincial list, said he has an overwhelming interest in social development.
“In my experience as mayor I have seen many social problems in my area. My focus has always been strong on developing our children and getting them off the streets and on to sports fields,” he said.
Drakenstein mayor Van Deventer did not want to be drawn on her move to the legislature. She was elected as mayor after the 2011 municipal elections. She studied law at Stellenbosch University and initially served in the town’s regional courts from 1981 until 1984. She was then called up to the Cape Bar and started practicing as an advocate in the Western Cape High Court.
One of the DA’s newcomers Ricardo Mackenzie, a former personal assistant to Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula, said gangs and drugs were his priority. Mackenzie was number 13 on the DA’s provincial list.
“We need more intelligence on the ground because gangs are becoming more and more sophisticated. As a party we need a strong hand on this within government,” he said.
Former UWC professor Nomafrench Mbombo did not want to comment on her selection. Mombo, who was number 8 on the DA provincial list, worked at UWC for 16 years. Community activist and banker Sharna Fernandez, ranked number 11 on the DA’s provincial list, could not be reached for comment.
Among the ANC’s 14 MPLs are Cameron Dugmore, Richard Dyantyi and newcomer Sharon Davids. They were in an ANC provincial executive committee meeting and not available for comment. Davids is a portfolio member on infrastructure at the Drakenstein Municipality while Dugmore and Dyantyi had served as MECs under then premier Ebrahim Rasool from 2005 to 2009 when the ANC controlled the province.
Nazier Paulsen of the EFF and Ferlon Christians of the ACDP declined to comment. The two parties each won a seat in the legislature.