Congratulations, Mr Mayor! We wish Zamuxolo Peter, the new mayor of Makana Municipality, everything of the best and we hope that his term of office will usher in a new golden age of efficiency, honesty and progress.
Congratulations, Mr Mayor! We wish Zamuxolo Peter, the new mayor of Makana Municipality, everything of the best and we hope that his term of office will usher in a new golden age of efficiency, honesty and progress.
We trust that Mayor Peter will earn a reputation for hard work, integrity and commitment to carrying out his duties in the best interests of all the residents of Makana Municipality. The road ahead for Mayor Peter will not be easy. It will require a considerable amount of courage to unite local party structures that have for the last few years been riven with factionalism, turf battles and power struggles.
Surprisingly, in the vote to elect the new mayor, all 20 ANC councillors voted for Peter. There had been a significant amount of corridor speculation in City Hall that rival factions, led by Peter and Paul Notyawa, could split the party when it came time to vote for the mayor.
The split did not happen – at least not publicly – and now Peter can justifiably say that he has the council (20 out of 28 councillors) fully behind him. Of course there is that little matter of the six DA, one Cope and one Mind councillors, who will probably vote against the ANC on many issues.
But with such an overwhelming majority, the Mayor should be able to push through whatever the ruling party can agree on. In other words, Mayor Peter has a solid mandate to go ahead and implement the promises his party made during last month’s elections.
When Grocott’s Mail published our Election Guide on 10 May, it included the local ANC’s position on 10 different issues: Local Economic Development, housing, water/sewage, libraries, electricity, refuse, recreational facilities, roads, corruption and development training programmes.
We are certain that the new councillors are raring to implement their election platform promises – but if they somehow forget some of the points, they can easily verify what they promised by checking out our Election Guide. We will certainly be monitoring their performance, and we will be happy to remind councillors of their obligations to their constituency.
