By Nokwanda Dlangamandla
14:09:2022

It is believed that the DA has allegedly lodged an urgent court interdict scheduled to be heard in the Johannesburg High Court today to prevent a council sitting.

The coalition in the City of Johannesburg is in disarray after COPE councillor Colleen Makhubele, who has taken over against the coalition councillor’s wishes as an acting speaker, issued a notice for the council sitting today to elect the new speaker and discuss the motion of no confidence against Mayor Mpho Phalatse.

This comes after Vasco da Gama’s removal as the speaker last week.

Radio Islam International discussed with the political analyst Prof Andre Duvenhage.

According to Duvenhage, South Africa does not have a stable consolidated democracy.

He mentioned people had grouped, including the EFF and ANC, and they were using their power base within the structure to undermine the functions of the structures for their interest.

He described coalition politics as a sophisticated application of democratic principles, which he said does not exist within the ANC political structure.

He said, therefore, that this raises enormous concerns amongst the ANC people about what may happen in the 2024 elections. For ANC, everything is about power and misusing the political structures to consolidate their positions and keep control.

Therefore, this poses problems to DA, given that they cannot establish a majority coalition.

He remarked that the DA needed to be given credit since the local government’s governing success rate was much better than the ANC’s local governance.

He added that they might make mistakes like everybody else, but they passed a massive exercise to unite many diverse minority parties and keep them together.

He described the EFF as an optimistic party that takes advantage when they see a gap.

According to Duvenhangwe, COPE is completely falling apart as a party judging from the recent scandals it has encountered in the last few weeks.

“I do not see COPE operating correctly towards the 2024 elections, and what we are seeing now is that individual councillors are just doing their own thing in an environment that has a lack of a party discipline,” he said

He said he thinks COPE is practising political opportunism, which is what he is more concerned about.

According to him, what is most likely to happen after the 2024 elections is that parties will form a coalition. However, the coalition’s survival will be short-lived as there is a lot of instability.

[LISTEN] to the podcast here