Piet Retief - The troubled Mkhondo Local Municipality (Piet Retief) is set to get a new mayor in the coming weeks after the ANC swept the boards in five by-elections Wednesday.
Having won five wards, the ANC now holds 19 of the 38 seats in the municipality in the province of Mpumalanga and on the border between South Africa and Eswatini.
The by-elections came after the ANC councillors in the Gert Sibande region defied it and voted for an independent councillor, Mthokozisi Simelane, to be mayor of Mkhondo.
This was despite the ANC having a clear majority to elect its own mayor without being assisted by its provincial coalition partners.
The refusal to back Ngelosi Ndlovu as mayor was attributed to factionalism within the structures of the ANC in the Mkhondo sub-region.
The ANC eventually fired the five councillors and by-elections were called in the politically and administratively unstable municipality.
Speaking to IOL after their victory, Xolani Shozi, the spokesperson of the ANC in the Gert Sibande region, said it continued to back Ndlovu and that he should be mayor.
“As you would know the organisation has long concluded its due processes of selecting the mayor candidature as at November 2021.
“Cde (comrade) Ngelosi ought to have been elected in the inaugural council last year already. At this moment, we are still rallying behind the name of Comrade Ngelosi,” he said.
Shozi added that soon after its new councillors are sworn in, it would table a motion of confidence and kick Simelane out.
“We will await the inauguration of the newly elected councillors, thereafter a motion of no confidence in the current troika will be tabled.
NEWS: Following sweeping victory in five by-elections held yesterday, the ANC in the Gert Sibande region in Mpumalanga is gearing up to oust the mayor of Mkhondo local municipality (Piet Retief), Mthokozisi Simelane. It intends to field Ngelosi Ndlovu as the next mayor. @IOL
— Sihle Mavuso (@ZANewsFlash) December 15, 2022
“Outcomes of which will be the reconfiguration of that council, so as to elect comrade Ngelosi as the mayor,” Shozi said.
Simelane did not respond when asked by IOL whether he would either voluntarily resign after the setback or wait to be kicked out.
There are three more pending by-elections after three former ANC councillors resigned shortly after the firing of the five who later went to contest as independent candidates and lost to their former party.
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