The City of Johannesburg is chewing and spitting mayors with reckless abandon. In the period 2016 to 2023, Johannesburg has had nine mayors and is headed for the 10th.
These are Herman Mashaba (2016-2019), Geoff Makhubo (2019–2021), Eunice Mgcina (acting, 2021), Jolidee Matongo, Mpho Moerane (2021), Mpho Phalatse (2021-2022), Dada Morero (2022-2022), Mpho Phalatse (2022-2023), Thapelo Amad (2023-2023).
Generally, a Johannesburg mayor lasts less than a year in office. Johannesburg is well-placed as a leading African city and to start charting a new path of greater faithfulness to the constitution and our laws, which has been seriously lacking until now.
The Municipal Structures Act section 7, augmented by sections 8 to 10, stipulates three different systems of municipal governance. These are collective executive, executive mayoral system, and the plenary executive system.
These systems do not necessarily warrant a coalition if no party wins an outright majority, but party bosses have subscribed to the dominant party or monopolistic or hegemonic party-political system since 1948 at least, until today, in a manner that moves away from the spirit of the constitution.
The collective executive is one where all the parties get seats in proportion to the percentage of votes they received. There are 10 seats or not more than 20% of the councillors that can form the collective executive.
Executive power falls in the collective executive and not on the elected mayor, but the mayor chairs the collective executive to achieve sufficient consensus. Deadlock is broken by the full council.
Mxolisa Dukwana was the first MEC to launch this model of governance at Maluti-a-Phofung in 2021. It is yet to gain popularity regardless of its obvious merits.
The next is the executive mayoral system where the dominant party largely elects the mayor and the mayor appoints mayoral executive committee members from within the ranks of the dominant party or its coalition, excluding other significant political parties.
All executive power rests with the mayor who then delegates powers to members of the mayoral committee, who serve at the mayor’s pleasure.
This system has demonstrated susceptibility to capture of state organs, poor audit outcomes and full-scale economic decline across South African municipalities.
This is because even oversight committees are dominated and controlled by the dominant party or coalition of like-minded parties. Like-mindedness often goes hand in hand with mafia mentality.
The last system, the plenary executive system, is where the entire council in session makes all decisions together.
In all systems, multi-party sub-committees can be formed to prepare items for debate and decisions. All elected councillors jointly take responsibility for all decisions of council and the mayor is more concerned with building sufficient consensus.
If councillors, the ministers of local government and the MECs for local government wanted true debate, evidence-based planning, and execution of plans they would be vigorously enforcing collective executive and plenary executive systems of governance which can also be transplanted to provincial and national government.
The concentration of power in one political party or one mayor, premier or president has not delivered in any province. No single province has achieved the 5.4% per annum gross domestic product growth rate propounded in the National Development Plan.
The DA proposes 8% per annum in its latest economic policy documents without any evidence of achieving that record anywhere, certainly not in the Western Cape.
These two alternative models which give power to elected representatives as a whole signal that we recognise plurality of views. Simply the EFF and Freedom Front Plus both represent valid community interests and concerns.
The IFP and ActionSA both represent another set of valid and relevant views that do not need to be bulldozed by majoritarianism that does not accommodate cogent force of argument, nor respect evidence-based planning and execution of all government programmes.
Evidence-based planning or governance means that you research ahead of time which approaches produce the best results in real life locally, continentally and across the world.
This means arguments are supported by empirical evidence and cogent logic not just votes. This accepts that a councillor or member of parliament must have substance and a clear moral stand not swayed by unscientific or ideological arguments that defy evidence and logic.
Coalitions are not necessary, especially if they continue to foster majoritarianism that has failed since 1948.
• Swana is a member of the 70s Group, political analyst, and governance expert
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