By Tladi Moloi
The coalition government in the Free State’s Maluti-a-Phofung local municipality is close to collapse but Moeketsi Lebesa, the president of the Dikwankwetla Party of South Africa (DPSA), has a plan to save it.
The chief whip of the ailing municipality in Qwaqwa, Free State, has urged the coalition leadership to swallow their pride and apologise to their partners.
Lebesa said the agreement will fail if the parties involved do not solve their disputes.
If an agreement cannot be reached, Lebesa fears the coalition will lose power in pending motions of no confidence in mayor Gilbert Mokotso, speaker Paratlane Motloung – both members of Map 16, a civic organisation – and the speaker.
The ANC filed the motions of no confidence.
In the 2021 local government elections, Map 16 won 20 seats of the available 70 while the ANC scored 28. Map 16 needed 36 seats to take the municipality – hence they invited other parties to form a coalition government to defeat the ANC, which had been in power since 1994.
The coalition consists of members of the DPSA, ATM, ACM, AULA, AIC and FF Plus. The DA supports it.
“It is not too late for [he coalition leadership] to come to the table and negotiate. They have failed us but we are giving them a second chance. But we will have new conditions on the table,” Lebesa said.
Lebesa told Scrolla.Africa that the coalition government was lucky that the council’s sitting was disturbed on Monday, because the coalition would have lost seats if the motions of no confidence against the trio had been tabled.
The sitting was deferred by the speaker after chaos erupted.
Before the sitting started, the speaker announced that the police had arrived to arrest three ANC councillors. The councillors were accused of stealing the municipal escalator.
In the end, the police left without their targets, but it delayed the meeting and the speaker saw fit to defer it to a date to be determined.
“There was a time when I counted the [ANC] members and every time I reached 22, I would start again to count in disbelief, because they only needed 23 to win the motion. I know that some small parties were going to vote with them,” he said.
“When we started we were confident that we would be the first coalition government that would succeed in South Africa. But the main partner, Map 16, fell into the trap like other coalitions did,” he said.
They were not consulting the smaller parties in the coalition, and had not kept their promises to change the way things were done, he said.
Mmutlanyana Sekete, the spokesperson of Map 16 was not available for comment.
Pictured above: Moeketsi Lebesa
Image source: Supplied
