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The Democratic Alliance/Cape Town mayor battle has been put on ice for now as the DA withdrew a motion of no confidence against Patricia de Lille after the two parties reportedly reached common ground.
Following a lengthy meeting between the DA leadership and De Lille that lasted long into Wednesday night, the two parties confirmed on Thursday morning that they had reaching an agreement.
The agreement was reportedly to allow De Lille’s disciplinary hearing to continue while she stayed on as mayor in the interim. But a press briefing was planned for around 2pm today, after the DA caucus had been informed of the agreement.
Caucus deputy leader JP Smith was expected to disclose the details of the agreement.
The decision came as a surprise since DA last week vowed that its fight with De Lille was far from over and revealed that it would be appealing the Western Cape High Court judgment which set aside its decision to terminate De Lille’s membership.
Following this announcement last week, DA councillor in the Cape Town council, Marian Nieuwoudt, then tabled a new motion of no confidence against De Lille during the first day of the council’s new term.
The motion was scheduled for Thursday but has been withdrawn.
As a counter to the DA’s motion of no confidence on De Lille, the ANC in Cape Town was set to table its own motion of no confidence in council speaker Dirk Smit on Thursday.
The motion against Smit was set to proceed when the council met.
The withdrawn motion of no confidence against De Lille was the second brought by her own party against her this year. De Lille survived a similar motion of no confidence against her in February by one vote.
The mayor on Thursday morning tweeted that she was feeling “positive” ahead of the motion, saying “what must be, will be”.
“The motions of no confidence in the past and this one have been on the basis of untested allegations without evidence,” said De Lille.
De Lille said she would continue to put the people of Cape Town first.
Smith, who has been critical of De Lille’s leadership over the past 12 months, ahead of the withdrawn motion had said “it would be very difficult to predict the outcome of the new motion against the mayor.
“The party and the caucus, however, still believed it was the right thing to do given the raft of allegations levelled against De Lille and the fact that she had lost the confidence of 70% of her caucus.”
Smith explained that the same conditions still applied, and the same reasons for the DA’s loss in confidence still stood.
Cape Town ANC caucus leader Xolani Sotashe told News24 last week that they had lost confidence in Smit, claiming he had lost control of the council over the last few months. – Additional reporting by News24
