Democratic Alliance Provincial Leader, Cllr Nqaba Bhanga, was elected as the Executive Mayor of Nelson Mandela Bay during yesterday’s council meeting. Nqaba Bhanga was the only nominee for the election.
Mayor Bhanga is currently in talks with different political parties in order to form a stable coalition government.
After being elected by DA, PA, ACDP and COPE, UF and AIC councillors, Bhanga condemned the ANC, accusing the party of being prepared to “kill” just to hang onto power.
“Today this must be the end of tyranny. I fear for the lives of many councillors who are here today. Starting from tomorrow we will start the business of the city. We will start by serving the people.”
The election on Friday came after Speaker Buyelwa Mafaya was escorted out of the council by unknown men who appeared to be security personnel.
The council was presided over by Patriotic Alliance (PA) councillor Marlon Daniels, after Acting City Manager Mandla George declined to preside on the grounds that his family was once threatened.
The African National Congress (ANC) in the chamber opposed this, saying due processes had not been followed.
Yesterday’s council sitting was third time lucky as previous attempts to elect a new Mayor had failed. Bhanga will fill a void that was left when the late former Mayor, Mongameli Bobani was booted out of office in December 2019.
AND, if you were wondering where Nelson Mandela Bay’s newest hotspot will be – see the video below which indicates that that could be COUNCIL:
Speaker, Buyelwa Mafaya, was removed from the chambers by two men, in what has been described as ‘kidnapping-style’. The incident apparently happened after delays during a council meeting held to elect a new mayor. Mafaya, seen in yellow in the following clip, had been granted a court order for an urgent meeting to elect a mayor and her removal was apparently to stop this from going ahead.
Bhanga Biography:
He was born in KwaZakhele, Port Elizabeth on 28 August 1977. It was at the KwaZakhele High School that he first got involved in student politics. He was elected the regional chair of the Congress of South African Students (Cosas).
Bhanga joined the African National Congress and became the party’s Nelson Mandela Bay Youth Leader, and SRC President of the Port Elizabeth Technikon where he obtained his first qualification in Public Administration. He later on achieved a postgraduate qualification in Maritime Studies. Bhanga served as the national secretary general of the South African Student Congress (SASCO), and also as the youth leader of the Congress of the People (COPE) and its member of Parliament from 2011 to 2014, prior to him defecting to the DA. He served as an MP for the DA from 2014 to 2016. He was the party’s Ngqura constituency leader.
In 2016, he was elected as a councillor and was appointed the Mayoral Committee Member (MMC) for Human Settlements of the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality under mayor Athol Trollip, whom he succeeded as Party Provincial Leader in 2017.
Bhanga was the DA’s candidate for Eastern Cape Premier in the 2019 general elections. Following the elections, he became a Member of the Eastern Cape Provincial Legislature and consequently assumed the title of Leader of the Opposition.
On 4 March 2020, Bhanga resigned from the Eastern Cape Provincial Legislature. The DA had nominated him as their mayoral candidate for Nelson Mandela Bay. He was elected unopposed as mayor on 4 December 2020.
Alan Straton
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