President Cyril Ramaphosa has assured opposition parties that the government would not disrupt the functioning of coalition governments where the ANC was not in power.
The DA scored major victories this week when it bagged the key metros in Gauteng and other municipalities where the ANC failed to get an outright majority.
He said it was the intention of his government to see coalitions in the hung municipalities succeed.
In the past five years coalitions have battled to survive due to disruptions and other issues.
Ramaphosa said what was key was the delivery of services to communities.
It would not be in the interests of his government to disrupt coalition governments.
“For me the worst will be when there are disruptions and instability. I can say that from government level, we will not be seeking to disrupt or destabilise governments at local government. We accept that people have spoken and the will of the people must be executed. We will support the governments that have been put in place,” said Ramaphosa.
He said the new councils come into place after the Municipal Structures Act came into effect on November.
This law allows the strengthening of municipalities by establishing municipal public accounts committees.
These would be the public finance watchdogs of the municipalities. The Auditor-General has released reports where there has been billions of rands in irregular expenditure.
In the last report, there was R26 billion in irregular expenditure and there is no paper trail for what the money was used for.
POLITICAL BUREAU