The Nelson Mandela Bay special council meeting to hear a motion of no confidence against Mayor Athol Trollip will resume - for the third sitting - at 10:00 on Thursday.

The previous two sittings descended into chaos and were adjourned. Speaker Jonathan Lawack announced at the previous sitting that the meeting was permanently adjourned, and that the opposition would have to petition for a new special council meeting to take place.

However, the municipality subsequently issued notice to say that the meeting would reconvene on Thursday.

The coalition government has had a minority of 59 seats in the 120-seat council since a fallout with the United Democratic Movement.

However, they recently secured the Patriotic Alliance as a coalition partner, taking them back up to 60, and the African Independent Congress has also declared its support to the coalition, giving it a potential majority vote of 61.

The African National Congress (ANC) will be going into the meeting minus two councillors, and thus two votes down, with both Andile Lungisa and Bongo Nombiba currently behind bars.

Lungisa began an effective two-year jail term on Wednesday for assaulting former member of the mayoral committee and Democratic Alliance councillor Rano Kayser, while Nombiba was handed a five-year prison sentence for fraud in April.

Six motions tabled

The DA will also be a councillor short as undertaker-turned-DA councillor Mbulelo Manyati is currently appearing in the Port Elizabeth Commercial Crimes Court on a charge of fraud.

Manyati's attorney, Zolile Ngqeza, had asked for his client to be excused, so that he may attend Thursday's council meeting but Magistrate Johannes Claassen said politics was not a sufficient reason to postpone.

Six motions have been tabled, they include: to remove Trollip as mayor; to remove DA councillor Lawack as speaker of council; to remove DA councillor Werner Senekal as chief whip; to rescind the decision of council in November last year that dissolved the post of deputy mayor; to vote in a new deputy mayor; and to remove all political heads of municipal portfolios.