Nelson Mandela Bay's coalition government will be tested again.
This, after the Deputy Mayor Mongameli Bobani laid charges on Wednesday against Municipal Manager, Johann Metler, and the Executive Director of Corporate Services, Vuyo Zitumane.
Addressing journalists at the Humewood Police Station Bobani said the case relates to millions of rands that have been spent on allegedly dubious contracts, purportedly entered into by Mettler and Zitumane.
On Tuesday Zitumane, through her lawyer, said she was seeking R500 000 in damages from Bobani for alleged defamatory remarks that he made about her in which he referred to her as being corrupt.
Executive Mayor Athol Trollip also announced at a media briefing also on Tuesday that the Metro would be focusing its forensic investigations on several multi-million rand contracts that it believes to be irregular.
One of those involved a tender with firm, Milongani Eco Consulting, which falls under the Public Health Directorate headed by Bobani.
Bobani said the action he was taking was consistent with the United Democratic Movement's commitment of rooting out corruption within the municipality and all organs of state.
"I'm here at Humewood police station to press charges against the municipal manager and the acting executive director of corporate services Ms Vuyo Zitumane. The charges have a potential of implicating the executive mayor. The executive mayor must answer about these charges he knows everything about it" he said.
Bobani also accused Trollip of being racist towards municipal employees.
" The racism is there this man does not want to sort this matter out. All the workers are crying about racism" He said.
He also responded to questions of the current status of the coalition between the UDM and the DA in Nelson Mandela Bay.
"As you can be able to see right now that the coalition is on a very low pace because the DA does not want to accept that they are not in power. The DA doesn't want to accept that this is a coalition government. There is no way that we can allow one man to actually decide for us and run that municipality like a farm," Bobani said.
Meanwhile, coalition partners representing the DA, COPE and the ACDP in Nelson Mandela Bay have slated the criminal charges laid against two top Municipal officials by the deputy mayor, Mongameli Bobani.
In a joint statement Wednesday, the Metro's other coalition partners as well as the DA-led mayoral committee came out in support of the officials and the mayor, saying the charges were spurious.
Mayoral committee member and head of the Human Settlements Directorate, Nqaba Bhanga, says they're behind the executive mayor who he said demonstrated his commitment to rooting out corruption by suspending an official and seizing the laptops of other officials as part on an ongoing graft probe.
