In open defiance of his party leader, Peter Marais says he will return to office as mayor of Cape Town this week, vowing: "I am going to start running the city again."
And in a startling disclosure, he alleged that leaders of the Democratic Party component of the Democratic Alliance had started plotting his demise less than 24 hours after the DA's Cape Town election victory last December.
DA leader Tony Leon ordered Marais to quit his job as mayor on Friday, prompting an unprecedented attack by his deputy, New National Party leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk.
Later that night, the NNP's head council gave Marais a unanimous vote of confidence, thanking him for "his tremendous role in serving the people of the Western Cape" - a direct slap in the face for Leon.
But before Marais can return he has to be exonerated formally of any wrongdoing in the aborted street renaming fiasco by a full sitting of the unicity's 200 councillors.
Former judge Willem Heath found that Marais had misled the public in the campaign to rename Adderley and Wale streets after Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk. But the council's rules committee has cleared him. This will now have to be ratified at a full council meeting on Tuesday.
The battle positions could not be clearer: the DP is demanding that Marais goes, the NNP that he is immediately reinstated.
Within the 107-strong DA council caucus, the DP has 37 councillors and the NNP 70. So, if the alliance partners take each other on at the vote, the NNP will need the ANC's 77 councillors to win.
But even if he is reinstated, Marais is doomed. He will then still have to face the DA's national management committee on Friday. The DP is in the majority and, unless Leon backs down or is not supported by his party, will fire Marais on the spot. This is because as a DA member, the DA leadership has a right to discipline him.
This would leave the NNP having to decide whether to accept defeat or to break the alliance.
The Western Cape provincial government is an NNP-DP coalition. As the bigger party, the NNP could decide instead to forge an alliance with the ANC. Both the DP and NNP have in the past 48 hours affirmed their commitment to DA alliance.
But two key issues could sink the alliance.
First, both Leon and Van Schalkwyk have staked their pride on the Marais issue and, secondly, sources say Van Schalkwyk's attack on Leon, suggesting he could not be trusted, left DP members countrywide "apoplectic" with rage.
The Sunday Argus asked ANC provincial leader Ebrahim Rasool whether his party would support or banish Marais on Tuesday. He replied: "There has been no decision."
Asked whether the ANC believed Marais had done anything wrong, he said: "There has been no conclusive evidence, either way."
Rasool said his party stood for the principle of "stable government, with or without Marais". But he added that the decision would be based on "the need for reconciliation between the coloured and African poor".
Head of the DA's national management committee James Selfe, said the action against Marais was the result of "what Marais was doing to the cause of creating an effective and principled nationwide opposition to the ANC." Considerations (about Marais) go well beyond Cape Town, the Western Cape and "any other parochial consideration," he said.
He confirmed that Van Schalkwyk's public attack on Leon was viewed "in an extremely serious light".
But he dismissed Marais's allegation that the DP had been plotting his demise since the day after the election as "rather fanciful and conspiratorial".
The DP and NNP leadership meet on Sunday to try to salvage their relationship.