Following a long day marked by endless caucus breaks the City of Joburg finally got a new Council Speaker.
The African Independent Congress’ Margret Arnolds who until the thursday meeting was serving as the Mayoral Committee Member responsible for Finance was elected to the position defeating candidates from both the Democratic Alliance and the United Democratic Movement.
Arnolds replaces Action SA’s Nobuhle Mthembu who was ousted through a motion of no confidence.
Arnolds was previously a Speaker in the City and expressed confidence as she returns to the position.
“It was also difficult when I had to leave the speaker to go to finance because you don’t know what away to where you are going and I can definitely say I have achieved in finance. I had a funded budget, I have things have just gone upwards in finance and I think to me that was good,” said the new Speaker.
Arnolds said she’ll hit the ground running in the Speaker post.
“In the speaker’s office, yes, I understand what the speaker’s office is all about. I know that there are things that I wanted to do before and I’m able now to complete them and I must first go and see what the previous speaker has done so that I can continue where she has left and maybe look at what the gaps are but to me I love challenges and I believe that if you put yourself into something you are able to achieve so it’s not at all difficult,” said Arnolds.
Her election, along with the DA’s failed motion of no confidence against Executive Mayor Dada Morero has exposed cracks in the city’s so-called Government of Local Unity with Action SA abstaining during the vote against Morero and in turn the ANC voting against Mthembu. The divisions are likely to see other Action SA councillors who are currently serving as committee chairpersons removed in the next council sitting set to take place sometime in August but Arnolds underplayed the differences stating the coalition is holding.
“The issue of the other political parties, whether there’s trust or there’s no trust, we live in a country where democracy is there and I do believe that it was every political party’s right to field a candidate. There was no qualms with it, there was no anything, I don’t think there’s anything that went wrong between us, it’s just that someone also wanted to take a chance in getting elected.
“If we have to do that when we go to elections and say some people can’t participate then we’ll probably only have the bigger parties participating but this is good for democracy and we have tried and we’ve seen what has happened. You were here, you’ve seen what has happened and I’m not going to unfriend them or I’m not going to be saying that I’m not going to be part of them, we are still part of each other,” said Arnolds.
Arnolds’ election creates a vacancy in the executive since she held the position of Finance MMC and Morero is widely expected to use the opportunity to reconfigure the coalition.