Johannesburg – The ANC’s control of the Ekurhuleni metro under mayor Mzwandile Masina appears to be under threat as one of the coalition partners, the African Independent Congress (AIC), threatens to pull out.
The threat became more serious this week after the planned meeting between ANC and AIC, which was to be held on January 15, failed to materialise. It was supposed to address the modalities of the reincorporation of Matatiele into KwaZulu-Natal, but ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe was in George, in the Western Cape, for the ANC birthday celebrations.
Ekurhuleni became the only metro in Gauteng to be retained by the ANC after the AIC, the PAC, the Patriotic Alliance under Gayton Mckenzie, and Independent Ratepayers Association of SA under Izak Berg agreed to vote along with the ANC and ensured that Masina was elected as mayor.
The other metros of Joburg and Tshwane, which were previously under the ANC, were taken over by the DA after the EFF urged its councillors to vote with the DA, which led to ANC councillors occupying the opposition benches.
Now, Ekurhuleni looks set to fall under the DA if the ANC does not agree to reincorporate Matatiele into KZN, which formed the basis of the coalition between the ANC and AIC.
The meeting to resolve this matter has now been scheduled for this weekend.
AIC general secretary Steven Jafta said: “We are yet to finalise our agreement. We will give the ANC until the end of March to make a final decision on the reincorporation of Matatiele. The reincorporation was our first condition of entering into a coalition with the ANC in Ekurhuleni and Rustenburg. The ANC knows that we want the entire area, including all voting stations to be reincorporated into KwaZulu-Natal.”
He said the ANC was also aware that the people of Matatiele wanted to be reincorporated into KZN, where they hope to have access to health and social services.
“In 2009, the then minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Sicelo Shiceka, held a referendum on the issue.
"The results were withheld. Minister Shiceka never released the results. Our own view was that Shiceka did not divulge the outcome of the results because the majority of the people had expressed their desire to be reincorporated into KZN."
He was adamant that his party would pull out of the coalition if the ANC did not agree to the AIC's demands.
Mantashe said “progress” had been made in the negotiations with the AIC on the matter, and that the ANC would communicate the outcome in due course.
He said the ruling party was not worried about the AIC pulling out of the coalition agreements in Ekurhuleni and Rustenburg. “We will talk to them; our relationship must not be controlled by communicating to newspapers.”
In December, Mantashe was able to save the fragile coalition in another meeting, when the AIC threatened to pull out.