Riyaz Patel
Outgoing eThekwini Mayor Zandile Gumede appears determined to not go quietly.
Gumede withdrew her resignation Wednesday which she handed in Monday.
ANC spokesperson Pule Mabe conceded that the party has never faced this kind of defiance before.
“It is actually an unprecedented thing as we have never had something like this before.
“We’ve had state presidents being recalled, so the recalling and redeployment of the African National Congress members is a known norm, in fact, it is an acceptable norm,” Mabe added.
Gumede’s sudden withdrawal of her resignation has resulted in a delay of the swearing-in of her proposed successor, Mxolisi Kaunda.
Fawzia Peer is currently serving as acting mayor of the eThekwini Municipality.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that Gumede met with the ANC’s top six to discuss her resignation and this led to her decision to withdraw it, News24 reported Wednesday, citing sources in her circle.
“She came to Johannesburg to hear for herself why she was redeployed with no reasons. They told her the instruction was for the PEC to hold off on her redeployment but they went ahead anyway. This is the reason why she has now decided to withdraw her resignation,” the source was quoted as saying.
The embattled mayor is facing fraud and corruption charges relating to a R208-million waste tender, but the ANC in KZN underlined that this had no bearing on their decision to redeploy her, and that “governance in the province” guided their pronouncement.
Gumede was suspended in June and subsequently ‘removed’ from her mayoral position following a two-day special meeting of the ANC’s provincial executive committee (PEC) in early August.
She and her eThekwini executive were redeployed and had until Monday to resign.
She reacted angrily and defiantly to the news at the time: “I’m being shut down not to do my oversight. I’m not going to allow that. I’m not going to be taking that lying down. I’ll be using real instruments of my organisation. You can’t suppress me because I’m a women. Enough is enough.”
“They [NEC] must say why they call me incompetent,” she added.
Her charge of patriarchy in the organisation was echoed by ANC Women’s League president Bathabile Dlamini, who during a dialogue with President Cyril Ramaphosa, lashed out at the party over a culture of what she said was “removing women from positions of power.”
