Ekurhuleni executive Mayor Mondli Gungubele. Photo by Mabuti Kali
THE ANC Ekurhuleni region leadership wants mayor Mondli Gungubele
out.
Daily Sun understands the regional executive committee wants
regional chairman and deputy trade and industry minister Mzwandile Masina to
replace him.
This follows reports of Gungubele backing municipal manager Khaya
Ngema, whose contract was allegedly renewed without following due process. A
legal battle is looming to have Ngema unseated, raising questions about the
legality of tenders he signed off.
It’s also understood the committee wrote to the party’s
secretary-general Gwede Mantashe, putting the case for Gungubele’s
removal.
The Gungubele faction lost out in the recent regional elective
conference.
Gungubele didn’t make it on to the regional executive committee and
now his position as mayor has created two centres of power.
Masina is said to be willing to stand down as deputy minister to
become mayor. But he played the issue down, saying: “I am deployed as a deputy
minister. There is someone who is deployed as the mayor who I work with now.
“There is no contradiction. We are both members of the provincial
executive committee and will share perspectives as we are bound together by the
movement.”
Gungubele was in a meeting yesterday, but asked to be contacted
later. Fearing loss of votes in the municipal election next year, the committee
is understood to be willing to have Gungubele as the face of the campaign.
But they are said to be adamant that he shouldn’t get another term
as mayor.
Ekurhuleni mayoral spokesman Zweli Dlamini said the mayor refused
to be drawn into “malicious rumour-mongering”.
He would therefore not justify it with a response.
