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- Tshwane Mayor Cilliers Brink will stay on as the executive mayor.
- This despite ranking highly in the DA's candidate selection process for the 2024 elections.
- He says he wants to keep his promise to residents that the DA-led coalition will turn the city around.
Tshwane Mayor Cilliers Brink will stay on as the executive mayor to "finish what we started", he announced on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday.
"Big announcement. I'm staying on as Mayor of Tshwane City. To finish what we started as a coalition: restore the finances, build energy independence, and improve services. In the face of cadres, tenderpreneurs, and everyone else who would prefer Joburg-like leadership in Tshwane," Brink said.
On Monday, the DA announced some of its candidates for the elections after a 10-month-long process and, according to DA Gauteng spokesperson Franco van der Berg, Brink ranked highly in the candidate selection process.
Despite this, he has decided to remain in the mayoral seat, "so that we could keep our original promise: clean out the ANC's mess, and build something better".
Tshwane had not reached the Cape Town or Midvaal standards of service delivery and good governance, he said, because there was no single party or coalition that had a majority from 2016 to 2021.
"We didn't have enough power to make fundamental decisions."
In 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 lockdown, the ANC had "turned a surplus into a massive deficit", delaying progress when it took over the metro for seven months.
"Now our coalition finally has a majority, but it takes hard work to hold it together. Stability is key to success.
"Many people look to us to make progress in Tshwane and take it as a model for how South Africa can be governed, to show that there is life after the ANC. It's an important project, one that I want to see through," he said.
READ | 'Diverse in race, gender, skill': DA unveils election candidates 'from all walks of life'
The DA's full list includes current MPs, including the party's spokesperson for justice, Glynnis Breytenbach, Eastern Cape DA leader Andrew Whitfield, national spokesperson Solly Malatsi, current chief whip Siviwe Gwarube, and DA spokesperson on public service and administration and strategy Leon Schreiber
On Thursday, Brink will have been in office for a year after taking the mayoral seat from DA councillor Randall Williams, who resigned on 13 February 2023.
In his resignation letter, Williams said he was resigning to stabilise the DA coalition and to prevent political instability from spilling over into Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni, which were also led by DA coalitions at the time.
In the end, Tshwane was the only one of the three DA coalitions to keep office.
Brink has since weathered the storm of a metro on the brink.
Tshwane's finances are in trouble with the City's current debtors' book, with the money owed to the City sitting at more than R20 billion.
In February, Brink announced a five-point plan to claw back R1 billion a month to turn the City's finances around.
It included:
- reducing bulk purchases and improving bulk accounts – like the billions it owes Eskom;
- managing costs instead of pushing up its tariffs;
- metering services, like water and electricity, and reducing illegal connections;
- ensuring it collects revenue; and
- reinforcing the Tshwane Ya Tima revenue collection campaign, which will focus on collecting revenue from the top 1 000 customers who owe it the most debt.
