The African National Congress (ANC) in the Eastern Cape says it is shocked by the composition of councillors in the mayoral committee appointed by Nelson Mandela Bay Executive Mayor Athol Trollip.

The ANC is calling the recently announced team a “skewed selection dominated by white males with only one black female”.

ANC Provincial Secretary, Lubabalo Mabuyane, said that Trollip’s decision to make up a mayoral committee dominated by one race and gender undermines the important need to ensure that women, black, Indian and coloured people, who represent the majority of residents in the Metro, are appointed to leadership positions to drive transformation.

“Trollip’s continuous fixation with dominating mayoral committee positions with white males shows the DA’s [Democratic Alliance's] continuous rejection of transformation and attests to their lack of interest to appoint equal numbers of black, white, Indian, coloured male and females to leadership positions in public institutions,” said Mabuyane.

He said that it would appear that the DA held a view in which black people in general, and black females in particular, were not capable of being in leadership positions.

“With this blatant disregard of transformation, we worry that the DA will continue erasing transformation work that was led by the ANC councillors in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro,

“By the look of things, the team appointed by Trollip, together with him, is going to fail to transform the Metro and unfortunately, they will continue white supremacy in the Metro,” said Mabuyane.