The DA’s federal executive (Fedex) will meet today to decide whether the party teams up with Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA or goes to bed with the ANC to form governments in Johannesburg and Tshwane.
This comes as two major parties, the DA and the ANC, scramble to find coalition partners after Monday's local government elections left 61 municipalities with no clear winner.
The 2016 arrangements that resulted in the DA taking over metros with the help of the EFF cannot be repeated because the DA has ruled out working with Julius Malema’s party.
The Sunday Times understands that a team led by DA federal council chair Helen Zille, leader John Steenhuisen and former federal council chair James Selfe will present the Fedex with a report outlining viable options for the party.
DA insiders said the party has held talks with Mashaba and has also been approached by the ANC about a possible agreement in Johannesburg and Tshwane.
However, any proposal for a DA-ANC working relationship would likely meet resistance in both parties.
Senior DA leaders are said to be divided over whether to choose Mashaba or the ANC to run the metros. ANC leaders said Zille is more open than Steenhuisen to having discussions with the ANC.
Though there is an appetite in the DA to work with Mashaba, the matter is complicated by his demand that whichever party he works with must hand him the mayoral chain of Johannesburg. Mashaba was the DA mayor of the city from 2016 to 2019.
A coalition with Mashaba, the FF+ and the ACDP could give the DA the numbers to take over both Tshwane and Johannesburg.
But the ANC is said have enticed the DA with an offer that would see the DA take over Tshwane while the ANC governs in Johannesburg.
According to ANC treasurer-general Paul Mashatile, his party is also open to working with the EFF. But that party’s demands have put off many in the ANC. The EFF wants to be handed a municipality to govern outright in exchange for helping any party get into power, and wants to appoint its own people in key positions. Its demands include, among other things, the amendment of the constitution within six months to allow expropriation of land without compensation, and the creation of a state bank within 12 months.
“At face value the EFF is unlikely to either agree with the ANC or the DA,” said an ANC national executive committee (NEC) member involved in the negotiations.
Several ANC leaders told the Sunday Times they would oppose any working relationship with the DA when the matter comes up at the party’s extended national working committee meeting taking place today at the Saint George hotel in Irene, Gauteng.
The party’s head of policy, Jeff Radebe, is expected to table the options the party should consider when approaching coalition talks. Radebe leads a team assigned to handle the negotiations; it reports to national officials.
Zille yesterday declined to comment, saying it would be wrong for her to discuss the contents of her presentation with the media. “I really cannot say what I am going to tell Fedex tomorrow. That would be wrong.”
Though he, too, would not comment on whether the two parties have held formal talks, the head of the NEC subcommittee on communication, Nkenke Kekana, said the ANC is talking to all parties.
“The ANC is a leading party in all these metros ... so we stand a good chance of constituting governments with parties that are in agreement with key principles, which is good governance and commitment to deliver services to communities. Because we are a leading party we should be able to attract other like-minded parties in various metros,” he said.
He would not say when the meeting took place, but said discussions started as soon as votes began trickling in.
“We started talking to different parties from the time we were aware of the results and the parties ... It’s perhaps the biggest negotiation initiative we have undertaken since democracy.”
Those in favour of the DA and ANC working together said this is an option that works for both parties. Though it may not necessarily be a formal agreement, the parties could agree not to challenge one another for control in these two metros and vote with each other on specific matters.
DA strategists met on Friday and looked at hung councils where the DA could form coalitions, and discussed the party’s options. These will be presented to today’s Fedex meeting.
“We went through each of the parties that we could work with — there are some on the red list and others on the green list — and allocated people who will reach out to those parties. Those would be the people who know the local dynamics,” said a DA leader, who asked not to be named.
“We’ve got decent numbers in Joburg, but it is complicated. We could work with ActionSA and the smaller parties and form a large coalition like we did in Cape Town in 2006.
“The only problem is that Mashaba started a whole political party so that he can be the Joburg mayor again. A lot of people in the party [DA] are of the view that you can’t come in as a 16% party and we bring over 30% but give you the mayoralty. They also don’t want Mashaba to shine on the backs of the DA numbers,” said the insider.
Mashaba told the Sunday Times his party will meet tonight and process the results of an internal poll it conducted on which party it should work with. “We as ActionSA want to avoid a situation where we enter into coalition with a likelihood to collapse. If we get involved, we want to be on solid structures,” he said.
ActionSA Gauteng leader John Moody said the party had met six other parties to discuss coalitions. He declined to name them.
The DA is also said to be considering a working relationship similar to the one it had with the EFF in 2016, where it does not get into a coalition with Mashaba’s party but votes with it — and makes him a mayor. This would put him on a leash, some are said to have argued.
Another consideration is that “voters may not forgive us for not working with ActionSA and inadvertently allow Joburg to go back to the ANC”.
This would also be done to manage internal dynamics in the DA caucus, especially among members who feel Mashaba would take credit for support mustered by the DA.
The DA is also coming to terms with the reality that it may not govern in Nelson Mandela Bay because the numbers don’t add up unless it works with the EFF.
The DA and ANC each have 48 seats in the metro. There is a strong possibility the metro could be governed by an alliance of the ANC, the EFF (with eight seats) and smaller coalition partners Northern Alliance (three), and Defenders of the People (two).
The EFF has not ruled out working with the ANC, but the DA has previously said working with Malema was a bad idea. The Sunday Times understands that some in the DA, especially its Gauteng members, feel Steenhuisen jumped the gun in making this statement.
Gauteng people are very pragmatic, they want to be in government
— DA leader, speaking on condition of anonymity
“Gauteng people are very pragmatic, they want to be in government, and are likely to differ with that stance,” said another DA leader.
“We could easily form governments and take governments from the ANC by working with the EFF but now he has made this big announcement.”
The insider said Steenhuisen’s position is likely to get Fedex support, however.
The ANC in KwaZulu-Natal, which lost its big municipalities in Monday’s elections, said it will oppose any suggestion of working with the DA.
Provincial secretary Mdumiseni Ntuli said it is the provincial executive committee's (PEC) position that it will not work with the DA.
“We didn’t discuss in detail what comrade Sihle [premier Sihle Zikalala] and I will say at the NEC meeting on Sunday. All we did was to understand the PEC’s attitude regarding partnering for coalitions and that is, we must be careful and not engage with any organisation that is advancing objectives that are different from ours.
“That being the DA, the FF+ — even though sometimes the FF+ slightly differs from the DA, they are the same in many ways — so the PEC expressed concern about any partnership that may include those two parties,” said Ntuli.
There has already been interest shown by parties such as the National Freedom Party, but Ntuli said there have been no formal coalition talks.
Ntuli said an ANC- DA partnership wouldn't work as the parties differ on important policy directions.
“The DA is a party that was formed to protect white interests — the interests of the few — therefore the ANC is not likely to associate with that, because there are fundamental issues of the ANC governing SA that we know they do not support, that is why we have never agreed with them till today about policies like affirmative action for example,” he said.
The KwaZulu-Natal stance is also popular in Gauteng, where there is a push for the party to form minority governments with smaller parties, in instances where a DA-ActionSA bloc is unable to form a government.
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