Behind the Chaos: The Late-Night Drama That Crowned Joburg’s New Chief Whip

If you think your office meetings are tense, you’ve clearly never spent a Tuesday night in the Johannesburg council chambers. This week, city councillors were treated to another classic episode of political theatre, complete with legal threats, heated accusations, and a last-minute withdrawal that ultimately handed the powerful Chief Whip position to the ANC’s Khazamula Chauke without a single vote being cast.

This isn’t just inside baseball. The Chief Whip is the enforcer, the disciplinarian responsible for keeping councillors in line and ensuring the city’s business actually gets done. In a hung metro like Joburg, where no single party holds outright power, it’s a role that can make or break a coalition’s agenda. And this time, the process to fill it was anything but smooth.

A Meeting on the Brink

The drama had been brewing since last Thursday. An initial attempt to elect a new Chief Whipafter the ANC’s Sithembiso Zungu moved to a mayoral committee rolehad already collapsed. This week’s sequel meeting dragged late into the night, charged with the anticipation of a re-run.

The tension was palpable from the start. DA councillor Gerhard Niemand stood up and dropped a legal bombshell. He accused Speaker Margaret Arnolds of operating outside the processes set out in the Municipal Structures Act during the previous week’s attempt. His message was clear: the DA deemed this process illegal, they were withdrawing from it, and they were reserving their right to take legal action.

For a moment, the entire meeting hung in the balance. In council politics, a party withdrawal can often be a precursor to a mass exodus designed to collapse the meeting by breaking the quorum.

“We Are Not Collapsing the Meeting”

Seeing this fear in the room, ANC councillor Tefo Raphadu immediately demanded the DA be referred to the ethics committee for allegedly trying to sabotage the sitting. The accusation hung in the air, threatening to derail everything.

Then, in a moment of calculated clarity, the DA’s nominated candidate, Nicole Rahn, rose to set the record straight. “We are not collapsing the meeting,” she explained, a line that likely prevented all-out chaos. However, she confirmed her withdrawal as a candidate based on the legal advice her party had received.

It was a strategic retreat, not a surrender. The DA was staying in the room but refusing to participate in what it considered a flawed process. After a firm rebuttal from DA caucus leader Belinda Kayser-Echeozonjoku, Raphadu was forced to unconditionally withdraw his accusation. The meeting could continue, but now with only one candidate left standing.

A Speaker’s Fear and a Foregone Conclusion

Caught in the crossfire was Speaker Margaret Arnolds. In a surprisingly candid defence, she revealed the immense pressure she was under. “I am very scared, I don’t like courts,” she admitted, explaining she had consulted with both the IEC and the city’s own legal department to ensure she was “doing the right thing.”

Her heartfelt admission was a rare glimpse into the immense pressure officials face in Johannesburg’s volatile political environment. Despite the fear, she insisted she had the conviction that she had followed the correct path.

With the DA’s Rahn out and ActionSA, who had previously indicated they would nominate someonestrangely silent on the night, the outcome was inevitable. Khazamula Chauke was elected unopposed, a result that belies the fierce competition hinted at just last week, where he received 96 votes to Rahn’s 71.

The gavel came down. The meeting adjourned. Johannesburg had a new Chief Whip. But the aftertaste of legal threats and procedural disputes suggests this is less a resolution and more an intermission. The real drama, it seems, is always just one council meeting away.

{Source: IOL}

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