ANC Chairperson in Nelson Mandela Bay Region, Babalwa Lobishe, has been elected as the new Executive Mayor of Nelson Mandela Metro Municipality in the Eastern Cape.
Lobishe replaces Gary van Niekerk of the National Alliance, who resigned earlier today. The ANC NEC decided that the party should lead in all hung councils.
In Nelson Mandela Bay, the ANC is in a coalition government with Van Niekerk’s party, the National Alliance, EFF, PA, PAC and AIC.
Babalwa Lobishe, who was the Deputy Mayor, has been unanimously elected to lead this metro. Lobishe says the top of her priorities will be to stabilize the metro by filling key managerial positions.
“The top priority is for us to look at the areas of audit outcomes, your irregular expenditure, and also other issues emanating from the overtime that is too much for the city, and also look generally at how we are going to stabilize the administration. One would recall that we have unoccupied positions of section 57 managers. So, it’s part of the priority,” says Lobishe.
The EFF has welcomed the appointment of the new mayor.
EFF Regional Chairperson, Khanya Ngqisha, says, “We are happy as the EFF. We’ve always been clear that anything that excludes the DA and Freedom Front Plus we’ll form part of. So, this current arrangement with the government excludes the DA and Freedom Front Plus and hence we support it and we are happy with the changes. This arrangement was, by the way, constructed by us as the government of local unity.”
Meanwhile, DA’s Provincial Chairperson Yusuf Cassim says they are concerned about this shifting of chairs, as service delivery is not prioritized but positions are.
“This represents nothing more than a rearrangement of chairs on the Titanic where this municipality continues to sink. Our ward committee counselors and the ANC’s ward counselors, by the way continue to be blamed for the dysfunction of the municipality because simple service delivery issues cannot be attended to. The electricity outages across the city most recently. The lack of maintenance of roads and stormwater,” says Cassim.
