Nelson Mandela Bay Executive mayor, Athol Trollip, looks likely to survive a motion of no confidence in him by the EFF, after the Patriotic Alliance threw its weight once more behind the DA-led coalition government.
The vote on the EFF's motion, as well as other motions, is expected to take place during a special Council meeting on Thursday.
EFF leader, Julius Malema, said his party was bringing the motion of no confidence in Trollip to punish the DA for opposing the party’s motion in Parliament on land expropriation without compensation.
Malema had also said that he wanted to remove Trollip because he is white and this was the only way to punish the DA.
In a statement on Tuesday evening, PA national leader, Gayton McKenzie, said that he was “disappointed with the crude display of racism” by the EFF.
McKenzie also said, “this does not sit well in a country with so many political murders and such a painful history of racism.”
“Such an analogy can easily be misconstrued by the angriest and stupidest among us. It has no place in our body politic,” he said.
In his statement, McKenzie also reminded that it was the PA who had lodged the first motion of no confidence in Athol Trollip in November 2016.
He said that motion was supported by the ANC and defeated because the EFF, at the time, protected Trollip.
“During that process, our motion proceeded without any racism or racist insults. We raised the motion based on our disagreement with the direction Trollip was taking the metro at that time,” McKenzie said.
He said they were now watching the latest developments with interest after the call for the removal of Trollip yet again, “this time raised by the DA’s erstwhile protectors, the EFF”.
McKenzie said when “we first agreed to start the Patriotic Alliance in 2013 I never dreamt we would be the ones deciding the governance fate of a city of more than a million people”.
