DA Fedex to decide this weekend on Solly's successor in Tshwane
The DA’s federal executive will decide this weekend who it will field as its next mayor of Tshwane.
Current mayor Solly Msimanga announced earlier in January that he was stepping down to focus on his campaign to become the DA’s first premier in Gauteng.
Gauteng is one of the DA’s strategic provinces and the opposition party is hoping to take it over in the upcoming general elections.
The DA’s federal executive will meet on Friday and Saturday to decide on the mayarol candidate.
DA spokes Solly Malatsi confirmed that the issue was on the agenda for the weekend’s meeting.
Only four out of the initial 11 shortlisted candidates were interviewed last Friday .
Tshwane speaker Katlego Mathebe, MMC for finance Mare-Lise Fourie, MMC for economic development and spatial planning Randall Williams, and MP Stevens Mokgalapa were interviewed.
The selection panel will recommend one of the candidates, which the federal executive will have to ratify.
The DA hopes to elect a new mayor in February but will have to get the EFF on board if it hopes to hang on to governing the capital city as a DA-led coalition.
Meanwhile, the council will have its regular meeting on Thursday at which the auditor-general’s annual report for 2017-18 will be tabled. Msimanga will try again to have city manager Moeketsi Mosola suspended.
He unsuccessfully tried to have Mosola suspended pending an investigation into procurement irregularities in relation to the multi-million rand contract to engineering consultants GladAfrica to run a project management unit. Mosola also faces many allegations of misconduct.
The second attempt to suspend him has been deferred to this council meeting.
The GladAfrica contract forms part of the R1.69bn in irregular expenditure the city has incurred. The irregular payments made to GladAfrica during the 2017-18 financial year totalled R317.8m .