Durban - The National Freedom Party’s (NFP) majority during the recent local government elections in eDumbe Local Municipality, in Paulpietersburg, northern KwaZulu-Natal, has seen it receive key office bearer positions, with both the mayor and speaker of the council coming from the party.
At the council’s inaugural sitting, the NFP’s Sibusiso Mkhabela was elected as the eDumbe mayor, with his NFP comrade Duduzile Nhlengethwa being elected Speaker of the council, with the deputy mayor being the ANC’s Majuba Mavuso, who was the mayor of eDumbe in the previous administration.
After the 1 November polls, the NFP in eDumbe had amassed 33.5% of the votes and received six of the council’s 19 seats, while the ANC came in second with 23.5% of the votes receiving five seats, while the IFP also received five seats after getting 23.2% of the votes.
The Democratic Alliance, Economic Freedom Fighters and Abantu Batho Congress received a solitary seat apiece.
The mayor received 11 votes of the possible 19 in the council, something that the NFP’s secretary-general Cannan Mdletshe said was a huge vote of confidence by councillors from other parties.
Mdletshe added that they owed their results in eDumbe to the tireless efforts of their volunteers who had worked diligently to bring success to the party in the municipal elections in the area.
“We are indeed happy, but we wanted more in eDumbe as we wanted to win it outright with 100% given how hard we had worked. However, we accept this because it signals the start of a new chapter for the people of eDumbe in which they will get service delivery accordingly because this is what we did when we ran the council in 2011.
“Now, this means that the people of eDumbe can sleep peacefully at night knowing that they have a municipality that respects them and that they will get service delivery and they will be generally taken care of by the municipality.
“We won’t allow a situation where the council and the councillors suddenly become bigger than them whereby if the people come with their problems the mayor doesn’t give them attention or people have to make appointments to meet with councillors because we didn’t make appointments with the people when we were asking for their votes,” Mdletshe said.
samkelo.mtshali@inl.co.za
Political Bureau