2019 Tshwane mayoral election

An Indirect mayoral election occurred on 12 February 2019 in the Tshwane City Council to determine the successor of Solly Msimanga as Mayor of Tshwane. Msimanga announced in January 2019 that he would resign as mayor, therefore creating a vacancy in the position.[1]

2019 Tshwane mayoral election
12 February 2019
 
Nominee Stevens Mokgalapa
Party Democratic Alliance
Electoral vote Unopposed
Mayor before election

Solly Msimanga
Democratic Alliance

 Elected Mayor

Stevens Mokgalapa
Democratic Alliance

No party holds an absolute majority in the city council. The Democratic Alliance and other smaller parties in the city council, with the support of the Economic Freedom Fighters, formed a coalition to govern the municipality after the 2016 municipal elections.

The Economic Freedom Fighters and opposition African National Congress abstained from the vote, therefore allowing Mokgalapa to be elected as mayor unopposed on 12 February 2019.[2] Mokgalapa was voted out as mayor on 5 December 2019, but his removal was later suspended.[3] He resigned on 26 February 2020.

Background

On 18 January 2019, incumbent Mayor of Tshwane and Democratic Alliance Gauteng Premier candidate, Solly Msimanga, announced that he would resign as mayor in February 2019 in order to focus on his premiership campaign to unseat incumbent Premier of Gauteng, David Makhura. Msimanga was elected mayor after the 2016 municipal elections. He became the first mayor from the Democratic Alliance, ending the many years of African National Congress rule in the municipality.[4][5]

Msimanga had survived many motions of no confidence during his tenure as mayor. The motions were tabled by the African National Congress and the Economic Freedom Fighters.[6]

On 31 January 2019, Solly Msimanga announced that he would effectively resign on 11 February.

Candidates

Democratic Alliance

The following people had been shortlisted by the Democratic Alliance as possible candidates.

  • Katlego Mathebe, Speaker of the Tshwane City Council
  • Mare-Lise Fourie, Member of the Mayoral Committee for Finance
  • Stevens Mokgalapa, Member of Parliament
  • Randall Williams, Member of the Mayoral Committee for Economic Development and Spatial Planning[7]

On 3 February 2019, the party announced that it had selected Stevens Mokgalapa to be the party's mayoral candidate.[8]

Result

As the Economic Freedom Fighters and opposition African National Congress did not field any candidates of their own and chose to abstain from the mayoral vote. The lack of any other candidates worked in Mokgalapa's favour and he was subsequently elected unopposed.[9]

gollark: "Xylostephones" is more accurate
gollark: Nope, not keywords.
gollark: <@337621533369303042> Was it you who wanted this?
gollark: Takes ages to load words, I'm afraid.
gollark: ```pythonimport thesaurusimport randomimport concurrent.futures as futureswords_to_synonyms = {}synonyms_to_words = {}def add_to_key(d, k, v): d[k] = d.get(k, set()).union(set(v))def add_synonyms(syns, word): for syn in syns: add_to_key(synonyms_to_words, syn, [word]) add_to_key(words_to_synonyms, word, syns)def concat(list_of_lists): return sum(list_of_lists, [])def fetch_word(word): results = concat(thesaurus.Word(word).synonyms("all")) return resultsdef add_words(words): with futures.ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=50) as executor: word_futures = {executor.submit(fetch_word, word): word for word in words} for future in futures.as_completed(word_futures): word = word_futures[future] try: data = future.result() except Exception as exc: print(f"Error fetching {word}: {exc}") else: add_synonyms(data, word)def getattr_hook(obj, key): results = list(synonyms_to_words.get(key, set()).union(words_to_synonyms.get(key, set()))) if len(results) > 0: return obj.__getattribute__(random.choice(results)) else: raise AttributeError(f"Attribute {key} not found.")def wrap(obj): add_words(dir(obj)) obj.__getattr__ = lambda key: getattr_hook(obj, key)wrap(__builtins__)__builtins__.engrave("Hi!")```

References
  1. Head, Tom. Solly Msimanga: What happens now he’s resigned as Tshwane Mayor, The South African, 18 January 2019. Retrieved on 20 January 2019.
  2. Stevens Mokgalapa elected as new City of Tshwane mayor. Retrieved on 12 February 2019.
  3. Moatshe, Rapula (5 December 2019). "Tshwane mayor Stevens Mokgalapa booted out". IOL. Retrieved 5 December 2019.
  4. Madia, Tshidi. Solly Msimanga to step down as Tshwane mayor, Mail & Guardian, 18 January 2019. Retrieved on 20 January 2019.
  5. Ngoepe, Karabo. Msimanga elected Tshwane mayor, News24, Pretoria, 19 August 2016. Retrieved on 20 January 2019.
  6. Tshwane Mayor Solly Msimanga survives motion of no confidence. Retrieved on 20 January 2019.
  7. DA shortlists four candidates for the Tshwane mayoral post. Retrieved on 26 January 2019.
  8. DA names Tshwane mayoral candidate to succeed Solly Msimanga. Retrieved on 3 February 2019.
  9. Stevens Mokgalapa elected new Tshwane mayor. Retrieved on 12 February 2019.
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