Johannesburg councilors on Thursday elected Democratic Alliance mayor Mpho Phalatse for a second term, following a similar move late last year that was overturned by the high court.
At the council meeting, 140 councilors voted to remove Phalatse, while 129 supported him.
“I am overwhelmed, I feel sorry for the people. Feeling sad for the city. The city is in good hands and it is very sad that it ended like this,” Phalatse told reporters after the vote.
Johannesburg has been run by a coalition that has been in place since 2016, when the ANC lost control of the city.
The Johannesburg High Court reinstated Phalatse in October after he was first expelled through a motion of no confidence on September 30, which Judge Raylene Keightley ruled was motivated by “ulterior motives” because the speaker of the council had given an “unreasonable” 16 hours notice for the vote. .
In a statement on Thursday, DA national spokesperson Cilliers Brink chose the Patriotic Alliance to condemn Phalatse’s final fate.
He said the smaller party looks set to return control of the city to the ANC after it refused on Wednesday night to support the current multiparty coalition government unless it gets access to the city’s finances “through control of the two best portfolios in the mayor’s committee. : economic development and infrastructure”.
“From the beginning of the current round of negotiations to prevent a motion of no confidence in mayor Mpho Phalatse, the Democratic Alliance (DA) has been clear that we will not hand over the taxes that the citizens of Joburg have paid so hard to the party that has the extraction of patronage as its goal,” said Brink.
Smaller parties have previously accused the DA of acting like big brother and undermining its role not only in the Johannesburg coalition, but also in other metros across the country where the ANC has also lost control.