EFF votes with DA in Joburg after council 'boycott'

The EFF attended a Joburg council meeting on Thursday morning‚ and voted with the coalition to pass DA mayor Herman Mashaba’s institutional review.

This comes after the last three council meetings collapsed as the ANC walked out‚ following an absence of the EFF. The result was an effective paralysis of those meetings‚ as nothing of substance was passed. Without the EFF and the ANC in council‚ there was no quorum.

Mashaba appealed to the EFF on Wednesday‚ asking them to reconsider their decision to not attend council meetings‚ as the meeting had to be adjourned again. He asked the EFF not to allow the ANC to collapse the council‚ saying it would affect the poor.

The boycott by the EFF was in protest at developments in the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality from which the UDM’s Mongameli Bobani was ousted as deputy mayor. As in Johannesburg and Tshwane‚ the EFF is part of the governing DA coalition in Nelson Mandela Bay.

The EFF’s national leadership said in a statement they would boycott the meetings to teach the DA how to work with smaller coalition parties.

On Thursday‚ the DA and its coalition partners voted with a show of hands in support of the institutional review‚ which‚ among other things‚ wants to look at the reintegration of the city’s entities.

As the EFF voted with the coalition for the first time in three meetings‚ the ANC heckled from the opposition benches.

-BusinessLIVE