Forty people were injured and one killed in July when an underground gas explosion ripped open an extensive strip of roadway on the busy city centre street. And four months later, repairs are yet to commence.
Margaret Arnolds is the third speaker of the City of Joburg council in the last two years but is confident the coalition government is stable enough to enable her to hold the position longer than her predecessors.
The party says there is no need for the cash-strapped municipality to spend R600,000 on an extraordinary meeting. Last week, COPE fired Colleen Makhubele as its representative councillor, creating a vacancy for the speaker position.
ActionSA Gauteng chairperson, Funzi Ngobeni, said that their coalition partner, the DA, was comfortable occupying the opposition benches in Johannesburg, where they had little power of influencing governance decisions.