The African National Congress brought the Sol Plaatje Municipality to its knees as a result of factionalism, in-fighting and putting the party line before everything else. The trigger point was the service delivery protests initiated by the community of Kimberley, demanding lower rates of electricity, fixing of the sewerage system, fixing of potholes and proper billing. The demands also included the removal of the Municipal Manager, whose total package is about R2 million, if not more, and the Chief Financial Officer, who was seen as the initiator of the new electricity tariffs. The municipality wanted individual households to pay a R250.00 basic charge on a monthly basis and on top of it buy the electricity that they need. It should be pointed out that some households do not even consume electricity of more than R100.00 per month. How will they afford the basic charge? Safe to say that the Municipality backed down on this issue and surprisingly consumers are getting more units of electricity for the same amounts of money.  So the Sol Plaatje Municipality backtracked on the pricing for electricity. They got rid of the basic charge, and the ANC called for the suspension of the Municipal Manager and Chief Financial Officer. The municipality must however still respond to other demands such as supplying of water, fixing of potholes and repairing the sewerage system.

The protests were by and large led by people who have a history with the ANC, but vowed to keep the movement away from any direct political influence. They went on record to say they do not want any political party or organization to influence the movement, thereby shutting out possibilities of working with structures that could provide leadership politically.

The suspension of the above-mentioned officials was not acceptable to the community. This was followed by a demand to remove the Executive Mayor, who was seen to be weak because he could not push for the axing of the two officials.

In response to this, Councillors organized a meeting in which a vote of no confidence was passed against the Executive Mayor with 9 ANC councillors voting with the opposition. The Mayor was removed, but the legality of the meeting was challenged in court by the axed Executive Mayor and the ruling was in his favour. The community did not accept this ruling and threatened to start with protest action again; forcing the ANC to instruct the Executive Mayor to step down and at the same time selected a candidate to replace him.  The ANC went to great lengths to justify the selection of Patrick Mabilo to a point where they even organized a press conference to make the announcement, coupled with his colourful history of political participation and service.

Sol Plaatje Municipality was paralysed for months due to the process of appointing the new Executive Mayor being delayed by in-fighting and their own differences. Eventually Council did sit to elect a new mayor and the ANC proposed two candidates, one Pule Thabane, belonging to the group of defiant councillors and Patric Mabilo who is the favourite of the PEC. The 9 defiant ANC counsellors voted for Pule Thabane with the opposition and defeated the preferred candidate. Council, including its committees never met during this time and Pule Thabane was never given the space to be the Mayor. The Mayor’s office remained unoccupied.

Then the ANC started with disciplinary processes against the 9 councillors and expelled them on the basis that they are not pushing its mandate and started preparing for by-elections. The 9 councillors took the matter to the Northern Cape High Court, but they lost the case, which means there are 9 vacancies at Sol Plaatje Municipality. The latest is that they would like to stand for election as independent candidates.

While all this was taking place the community formed a civic structure called Sol Plaatje Municipality Forum, which will be used to fight for better services from the municipality. The challenge with this structure is that it does not align itself to any political ideology and is not offering any political leadership to the Kimberley community. The community should not lose sight of the fact that the leadership of the Forum is constituted by people who have a history with the ANC. Therefore it can be expected that they will use the Forum to fight their own battles, which will not benefit the community in any way.

We call upon the community of Kimberley to be receptive to new political ideas, which can tackle the challenges currently being experienced in a serious and not opportunistic manner. This battle once again underscores why civic movements must unite with other progressive organisations of working people and fight for a set of unifying political demands to defeat neoliberal state policies and capitalism.