Yet another major metro shakeup
To add to the country’s recent mayoral-go-rounds in South Africa’s major metros, the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality’s mayor, Gary van Niekerk and deputy mayor, Babalwa Lobishe, resigned from their positions on 31 October.
Lobishe, who serves as the African National Congress (ANC) regional chairperson, was then elected as executive mayor during a council meeting currently underway in Gqeberha.
National Alliance (NA) president Van Niekerk, who occupied the seat of the metro’s first citizen for a year and a half after unseating the Democratic Alliance’s (DA’s) Retief Odendaal, will now be the city’s deputy mayor – with the two ultimately swapping roles.
“It was not [due to] pressure from the opposition or infighting in the coalition. We fought hard to bring stability to this metro and wewant political stability in this change or swap as we call it,” van Niekerk told HearldLIVE.
The administration of the metro that is home to 1.2 million people and contributes 2.63% to the GDP of South Africa has been battling unstable coalition politics for some time.
During the past year and a half, the ANC has been in a coalition in Nelson Mandela Bay with the Economic Freedom Fighter, Patriotic Alliance, African Independent Congress, Pan Africanist Congress of Azania, National Alliance and the Defenders of the People, together comprising 65 seats in council.
This shake-up was imminent, as the ANC has long been eyeing reclaiming the mayoral chains from van Niekerk.
“The ANC has been blackmailed for so long and the time has come for the party to take back Nelson Mandela to provide stability in the Metro,” said ANC Eastern Cape leader Oscar Mabuyane at the party’s two-day executive committee meeting last month.
Lobishe told reporters that the decision to take the reins was made a month ago. The ANC have been reclaiming mayorships in metros across the country of late, seen also in Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni.
Van Niekerk was elected as the mayor of Nelson Mandela Bay in May 2023, but his tenure was marked by no-confidence motions, a series of scandals and conflicts within his own party.
For example, in October 2023, a faction of the National Alliance announced the termination of van Niekerk’s party membership.
Subsequently, former Nelson Mandela Bay speaker Noxolo Nqwazi declared his council seat vacant. However, van Niekerk successfully contested this decision in the Eastern Cape High Court in Gqeberha, enabling him to continue serving as mayor.
Another scandal was where recent flooding in Nelson Mandela Bay, where Eastern Cape MEC for COGTA Zolile Williams cited the devastating impact of the floods as a result of the metro’s failure to maintain stormwater drains.
In September, News24 reported that recommendations of a probe into fraud allegations against van Niekerk suggested that he should be booted from his seat or suspended for a period of time – and also pay a fine and more than R500 000 to two law firms.
The report alleged that he had breached certain sections of the Code of Conduct as well as the Municipal Finance Management Act.
DA leader in the Eastern Cape, Andrew Whitfield, told the Daily Maverick that they had had some conversations with the ANC over a “super coalition”, but claimed that after the ANC violated their agreement in Tshwane to first form “stability pacts” in the metros, their discussions about Nelson Mandela Bay came to an end as well.
Whitfield said some of the smaller parties in the metro were playing the two big parties off against each other, and their “rent-seeking” behaviour did not make for stable governance.
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