Politics
The municipal council consists of forty-three members elected by mixed-member proportional representation. Twenty-two councillors are elected by first-past-the-post voting in twenty-two wards, while the remaining twenty-one are chosen from party lists so that the total number of party representatives is proportional to the number of votes received.
In the local government elections of 2000, the Democratic Alliance (DA) came to power in Stellenbosch. The administration was short-lived, however, and in October 2002, an African National Congress (ANC) and New National Party (NNP) coalition took over the council when four councillors defected from the DA and a local community party during a floor-crossing period. Willie Ortell (NNP) was elected mayor and GW Adonis (ANC) was chosen as deputy mayor.
After the next local government elections in 2006, a coalition was formed by the DA and several smaller parties, and Lauretta Maree of the DA was elected as executive mayor and Khulile Shubani of the United Democratic Movement (UDM) as deputy-mayor. In February 2008 councillor Myra Linders left the DA and stood as an independent candidate in the resulting by-election, and won. Her shift in allegiance allowed an ANC-led coalition, with the swing votes of the two councillors from the Kayamandi Community Alliance (KCA) to take control of the council in April 2008. Patrick Swartz of the KCA was elected mayor while Cameron Mcako of the ANC decame deputy mayor. After serious allegations of fraud by councillors surfaced, Myra Linders once again used her swing vote to topple the administration in December 2009 by supporting a DA-led motion of no-confidence in the mayor, deputy mayor and speaker Gordon Pheiffer of the ANC. Cyril Jooste of the DA became the new mayor, and Mcako and Pheiffer both resigned.
In the 2011 local government elections voters handed the DA an outright majority of twenty-five seats on the council, resulting in the first stable municipal council in more than a decade. Conrad Sidego of the DA has been appointed the new mayor.
Read more about this topic: Stellenbosch Local Municipality
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“All you can be sure about in a political-minded writer is that if his work should last you will have to skip the politics when you read it. Many of the so-called politically enlisted writers change their politics frequently.... Perhaps it can be respected as a form of the pursuit of happiness.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“From the beginning, the placement of [Clarence] Thomas on the high court was seen as a political end justifying almost any means. The full story of his confirmation raises questions not only about who lied and why, but, more important, about what happens when politics becomes total war and the truth—and those who tell it—are merely unfortunate sacrifices on the way to winning.”
—Jane Mayer, U.S. journalist, and Jill Abramson b. 1954, U.S. journalist. Strange Justice, p. 8, Houghton Mifflin (1994)
“Of course politics is an interesting and engrossing thing. It offers no immutable laws, nearly always prevaricates, but as far as blather and sharpening the mind go, it provides inexhaustible material.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)