Dada Morero to return as Joburg mayor in Kabelo Gwamanda ouster

Moves are afoot to install the ANC’s Dada Morero as the new mayor of Johannesburg as early as next month.

The ANC is believed to have clinched a deal with ActionSA and the IFP that would see them joining a government of local unity (GLU). Morero is now the city’s MMC for finance and had a brief stint as mayor last year.

This move would see Al Jama-ah’s Kabelo Gwamanda ousted as mayor.

ActionSA’s Senate, its highest decision-making body, met this weekend and is expected to endorse a deal between its leader Herman Mashaba and ANC Gauteng leaders Panyaza Lesufi and TK Nciza (provincial secretary).

Morero would take over as mayor should the agreement be fully endorsed by the ActionSA senate.

“The deal with ActionSA has been closed, they will take the speaker and chair of chairs and we will share committees in the legislature, including the small parties that the ANC has been working with,” said an ANC insider.

ActionSA chair Michael Beaumont said yesterday the party wanted Gwamanda’s removal as a top priority. “We will not assist any government if Gwamanda remains the head of that government,” said Beaumont. “This individual has proven wholly incapable of leading the largest city in our country and... it’s a situation that we cannot allow to continue.”

ActionSA vowed while electioneering that it would never work with the ANC and that South Africa would become a failed state if the ANC was not removed from power.

But Beaumont said Johannesburg was suffering severely under the paralysed leadership of Gwamanda and that the political climate had changed the situation.

“ActionSA has got 44 seats in the City of Johannesburg, we are the third biggest party. At the end of the day, we're going to have to ask ourselves the question of what value are we providing to all of those people who voted for us if we have the means to assist the situation and we aren't doing anything about it,” he said.

The ANC's regional secretary in Johannesburg, Sasabona Manganye, told the Sunday Times the party did not expect the addition of ActionSA to affect any other party in the coalition that is now in place.

“I can confirm that engagements to reconfigure the current coalition arrangements in favour of the majority party to have a mayor are taking place,” said Manganye.

“We are engaging IFP and ActionSA to join the GLU and we are not intending to move any party, we are engaging in the context of working with the current parties in the GLU. So we are just strengthening what we have, we are not changing anything.”

A senior ANC leader in Johannesburg said the party was confident that the EFF would support this move and that the ANC-EFF agreement for smaller parties to occupy the mayoral and speaker seats would fall away.

This individual [Gwamanda] has proven wholly incapable of leading the largest city in our country

—  ActionSA chair Michael Beaumont

In previous coalition negotiations over Gauteng municipalities, the ANC and EFF agreed neither of them would claim the mayorship or the post of speaker. 

“Comrade Dada [Morero] will still be the candidate once more because the term has not ended — those are the discussions that will happen this week as we configure the executive,” the source said. 

“The EFF agrees with the arrangement because it doesn't affect them — that thing of giving the mayor to minority partners falls off.”

This arrangement is also expected to back the ANC’s controversial R2.5bn capital expenditure loan plan.

ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula said yesterday there was a possibility that the government of national unity will have to “cascade” to local level to bring stability.

This is despite talks collapsing between the DA and ANC in Gauteng and Lesufi announcing a cabinet that excluded the DA.

But Mbalula said the collapsed talks did not mean the Gauteng leaders were defying the national leaders. “We agreed with the DA and others when we were talking that we will allow provinces to negotiate on their own. And Gauteng, by the way, did not reject the DA, they did not agree on the modalities of constituting a cabinet,” said Mbalula.

“In Gauteng they have a deal with the ANC in local government and we’re going to look into that deal — and if it means the GNU must find expression in metros [then] the ANC will decide — the national executive committee.”

It is unclear how ANC national leaders will push the GNU through to local level given that the ANC in Tshwane has announced that it will put forward a motion of no confidence in DA mayor Cilliers Brink.