Brink fights to keep his mayoral chain in Tshwane
Tshwane Mayor Cilliers Brink is fighting to retain his position as a motion of no confidence against him is moved to the top of the council agenda.
The latest motion, filed by the African National Congress (ANC), follows the withdrawal of a similar one in July.
The earlier attempt was halted after the Democratic Alliance (DA) obtained an urgent court order to block Brink's removal.
After political parties failed to secure a majority in the 2021 local government elections, the metro has been under the DA-led coalition government.
Brink took office in March 2023, following political wrangling that saw the election of Cope's Murunwa Makwaerela as mayor before he was ousted less than a month later.
READ MORE: Former Tshwane mayor Makwarela dies
Brink was elected with the backing of several parties, including ActionSA, the African Christian Democratic Party, and the Inkatha Freedom Party.
Addressing DA supporters outside Tshwane House on Thursday, Brink expressed concern that any change in leadership might reverse the disciplinary measures he initiated against municipal officials involved in the controversial multi-million rand Rooiwal Wastewater Treatment Plant refurbishment tender.
"We had the first credible plan to get clean water in the taps of the Hammanskraal people in decades.
We made significant financial recovery, improvement of audit outcome despite the damage caused by Panyaza Lesufi.
Building a new organisational culture, bringing in competent non-political people to deliver services to the people, that is the only way you govern a city.
This is our legacy and we will fight for it, even if we have to fight from the opposition," says Brink.
The mayor has accused his former coalition partner ActionSA of always taking credit for any progress made in the city, but blaming the DA when things fall apart.
The party's Tshwane spokesperson Kwena Moloto says the withdrawal of ActionSA from the Tshwane multi-party coalition has plunged the city into political instability, and now threatens the future of the capital city.
"Despite the successes achieved by the Tshwane coalition in the past 18 months, ActionSA’s dismal performance in the 2024 general election seems to have driven the party to realign itself to a faction of the ANC opposed to the Government of National Unity (GNU) as well as the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).
The same ANC faction, led by Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi, resisted efforts to form a Government of Provincial Unity, and have championed the ANC’s disastrous coalitions with the EFF in Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni," he said.
Moloto says in response to Mashaba’s turn against the DA and the coalition partners in Tshwane, the party's national leadership approached the national leadership of the ANC to seek a stability pact across Gauteng metros.
He said several attempts were made to persuade the ANC to withdraw the motion of no confidence against Brink.
"Had the motion of no confidence been withdrawn, it would have given the DA and the ANC the opportunity to discuss options for how Tshwane and other Gauteng metros could be stabilised. Such an arrangement would have been in the interest of residents, and furtherance of the aims of the GNU," he added.
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