After three failed attempts to elect a new mayor early this month, the City of Tshwane has finally elected a new mayor. The city did not have a mayor for three weeks following Dr Murunwa Makwarela's resignation after it was discovered that he was declared insolvent in 2016. 

 NEW MAYOR 

The Democratic Alliance (DA)'s Cilliers Brink was voted in as the Tshwane Executive Mayor today. Brink was up against COPE's Ofentse Moalusi ,who was nominated by minority parties combined for the position after they were let down by Makwarela. 211 councillors participated in the voting system and 119 of them voted for Brink, while Moalusi received 102 votes. 

 BUDGET 

On Monday there were reports that the embattled city was granted another lifeline by Gauteng Provincial Treasury to pass the metro's adjustment budget. The Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality is yet to table the mid-year budget as well as adjusted service delivery and budget implementation plan due to the city being without an executive mayor. 

 BALLOTS 

Before the voting could start, the African National Congress (ANC) and Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) refused to take part in the process until action was taken against the DA over 69 ballot votes. Two weeks ago, the DA instructed its 69 councillors to mark ballots with allocated numbers in order to identify which candidate they voted for during the election of the speaker, which took place via secret ballot.

COUNCIL MEETING COLLAPSE 

On 17 March, a special council meeting to elect a mayor collapsed when DA multiparty coalition members stormed out of the chambers after Council Speaker Mncedi Ndzwanana refused to remove two ActionSA councillors who had their memberships terminated by their party. On the second attempt to elect the mayor on 22 March, a dispute regarding COPE Justice Sefanyetso forced the meeting to collapse. Sefanyetso was accused of having two IDs because he was hiding a criminal record.