Jordaan must be Bay councillor first

The ANC’s decision that Danny Jordaan should be Nelson Mandela Bay Metro’s next mayor is not quite cut and dried yet.

There are still a number of statutory and regulatory hoops the party must jump through before Jordaan can assume the mayoral mantle.

The DA has also not ruled out the possibility it will put forward its own candidate for mayor – which will then require the full council to vote.

The ANC announced this week that Jordaan would replace Ben Fihla as mayor, businessman Bicks Ndoni would become his deputy while ANC MP Litho Suka would come in as the party’s chief whip.

But the Municipal Structures Act requires that an executive mayor and deputy be elected in council by a majority vote.

Only full-time councillors are eligible to be nominated.

This means that the three must first become councillors.

To do so they will have to be bumped to the top of the ANC’s municipal PR list and the Independent Electoral Commission should be informed accordingly.

It would then require some PR councillors to resign.

ANC spokesman Zizi Kodwa was yesterday quoted as saying Fihla would announce his resignation soon.

Once they resign, city manager Mpilo Mbambisa will have to declare the vacancies on the ANC side of council and the IEC will then advise that the next PR candidates on the PR list would be the new councillors.

The electoral officer for the Eastern Cape, Thami Mraji, could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Once all these processes are in place a council meeting will have to be called for the purposes of electing a mayor and deputy mayor.

Other parties could then also propose candidates and this would then go to the vote.

DA metro councillor Morné Steyn, who is also an attorney, yesterday confirmed that a council vote was required to confirm Jordaan as mayor.

He also confirmed that three councillors would have to resign before such vacancies could be declared.

“Of course is not a given. There are a lot of factions in the ANC and it may well have to go to a vote.”

He said the DA was certainly considering nominating its own candidate for mayor.

lThe EFF has called on Jordaan to immediately resign as president of the South African Football Assocation (Safa) following his acceptance for the job of executive mayor.

“Jordaan must resign from the association since he has chosen active politics and life as an ANC politician‚” the EFF said in a statement.

The DA said the deployment of Jordaan was “nothing more than a pre-election gimmick by a party that has lost the confidence of the people”. — With additional reporting by RDM News Wire

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