ANC will name mayoral candidates only after November 4, Mbalula says
The party has finished interviews and shortlisted 42 people across the eight metros, but the final say on who runs Johannesburg, eThekwini and the rest belongs to national officials once the votes are counted.
The ANC will not tell voters who it wants as mayor in any of the country’s eight metropolitan municipalities before the November 4 local government elections. The final choice will be made by the party’s national officials afterwards, depending on the result.
Secretary-general Fikile Mbalula set that out at the party’s reaction to the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement, as IOL reported on Thursday. The party, he said, is putting its energy into campaigning rather than into promoting individual mayoral hopefuls.
The ANC had been expected to name its mayoral candidates in August. Instead it published a shortlist of 42 potential candidates across the eight metros. Interviews and shortlisting are now complete, and the choice has been held back until after the vote.
“We are in the field, we are campaigning very hard, and that is it,” Mbalula said.
The authority, he stressed, sits with national officials and not with regional structures. “The mayorship issue is with the national officials. It’s not with the region. Region has submitted. We have interviewed people. We’re done. We’ve shortlisted and then that is it,” he said.
On Johannesburg, the shortlist includes the city’s mayor, Dada Morero, the regional chairperson, Loyiso Masuku, and ANC veteran Reverend Frank Chikane. Mbalula said national officials could decide between Masuku and Chikane. “If the officials decide Loyiso Masuku or Chikane is the right mayor, that’s the decision. That would have been taken,” he said.
eThekwini’s potential candidates include the incumbent mayor, Cyril Xaba, the deputy mayor, Thabani Nyawose, and the former KwaZulu-Natal premier, Nomusa Dube-Ncube.
Mbalula said everyone shortlisted has the ability to lead a city, but that the final call would follow the results. “Any of those people who were raised as candidates and all of that have the potential and the capability to become a mayor in any city. And the officials will take that particular decision post the election, depending on the outcome,” he said.
He also warned ANC members against chasing positions before the party has won the votes that would let it hand them out. “There is everything wrong for an ANC member and cadre to chase a position that you don’t know whether you will get or not get,” he said. Members, he said, had been told to focus on door-to-door campaigning and on persuading voters with the manifesto. “You have to convince the people about the manifesto and why it is important to vote for the ANC before a position.”
Asked about reported remarks by ANC members on who should be mayor, Mbalula declined to be drawn, saying he had not been present when they were made. “I was not there, and I don’t know comrades were saying those things in what context. And I don’t want to comment on things that I did not hear,” he said.
The arrangement leaves voters in all eight metros going to the polls without knowing whom the ANC would put in the mayor’s chair. For residents of Johannesburg and eThekwini in particular, the question of who runs the city is the one that decides how quickly the water comes back on, whether the lights stay on and whether refuse is collected, and it will be settled after their ballots are counted rather than before.
