Durban — eThekwini deputy mayor Philani Mavundla has dared small parties to bring a motion of no confidence against him if they want to.
The 17-party bloc which Mavundla led to help the ANC retain power in eThekwini have openly expressed their dissatisfaction with him and accused him of using their votes to benefit himself.
Last week the Daily News reported that Mavundla’s relationship with the small parties had soured to the point where they wanted him removed from the deputy mayor position through a vote of no confidence.
But the Abantu Batho Congress leader hit back on Tuesday, saying he did not care about small parties’ threats against him. “You are well aware that I do not need to be a councillor to take my kids to school, so the vote of no confidence will be very much accepted by me,” said Mavundla.
Taking a veiled swipe at Visvin Reddy, he said “It does seem as if someone is either wanting people to buy your paper by spreading lies or that person is trying to be popular via your media platform.”
The small parties’ leading voice was Reddy, a leader of the African Democratic Change party, who did not mince his words about his desire to get Mavundla out of office.
Reddy told the paper on Tuesday that as small parties they felt disrespected by Mavundla, saying the deputy mayor had refused to meet them to give an update on his work as human settlements and infrastructure committee chairperson.
Reddy said he had written to Mavundla, asking for a meeting to explain service delivery issues pertaining to his department, such as power and water outages two weeks ago, but he never honoured the meeting.
Reddy said on Tuesday that they had called Mavundla to a meeting as members of the committee to get answers but he left a few minutes after the meeting started.
Reddy said Mavundla told them he had faith in the people serving in the committee and left the meeting to attend to investors at the Durban International Convention Centre.
“Mavundla is such an ungrateful fellow. He has forgotten that it was us who put him in the deputy mayor’s position and it was me who nominated him,” said Reddy.
As small parties they have already agreed to file a motion of no confidence, Reddy said, but they wanted to get the buy-in of other opposition parties to ensure that the motion was successful.
NFP councillor Zandile Myeni, who is the chairperson of the smaller parties bloc, said the 17 smaller parties bloc meeting which was to sit on Tuesday, was postponed to next week, but would not be drawn when asked about the reasons.
DA caucus leader in the municipality, Thabani Mthethwa, said his party never believed that the ANC was a good party to run the city, hence the DA called for the coalition to take over the city. Mthethwa said if small parties had realised that the DA was right they were welcome to come and discuss the motion with his party.
The IFP’s Mdu Nkosi said his party would wait to be approached and take the proposal to the national leadership’s negotiating team.
With 96 seats, the ANC needed the small parties to retain power in the city, but if all parties agreed to work together they would seize power.
Daily News