In a chaotic council meeting on Friday, the Democratic Alliance's Retief Odendaal was voted out as mayor of the biggest metro in the Eastern Cape. This brought one of the largest coalition governments -10 parties - to an end.

Nelson Mandela Bay got its third mayor in less than a year on Friday after the Northern Alliance's Gary van Niekerk was voted to become executive mayor of the metro after the DA-led council lost a motion of no confidence.

Van Niekerk's own party, the Northern Alliance, has been beset by internal problems and Van Niekerk was suspended by a breakaway group and recalled as a councillor. This parallel structure is headed by a sitting councillor, Bevan Brown, who in turn was suspended by Van Niekerk's alliance and is currently in court trying to get his job back.

Former mayor Eugene Johnson - whose term was so chaotic that the ANC leadership in the province attempted to put an end to it using words like "lawlessness and chaos" in a letter addressed to the municipality - was elected speaker of the metro, and Babalwa Lobishe, the ANC regional chairperson, was elected deputy mayor. The motions of no confidence in the previous administration under the DA's Retief Odendaal were brought by the EFF.

The Eastern Cape provincial government has been threatening to change the structure of the metro to facilitate replacing the executive mayoral system with a different system of governance...