Coalitions Blamed for the Collapse of Cities

Statement by Ashor Sarupen – DA Federal Council Chairperson:

ANC NEC member Dickson Masemola’s attempt at whitewashing the ANC’s local government record, by stating that coalition governments are to blame for worsening service delivery in Johannesburg, eThekwini and Tshwane since 2016, is not merely untrue, but it reverses the truth.

Johannesburg and eThekwini are governed by ANC-led administrations.

And in Tshwane, the ANC deliberately removed the stable DA-led coalition of Mayor Cilliers Brink and replaced it with another political arrangement designed to effectively return the ANC to power.

The common denominator is therefore not coalition government. It is the ANC.

Where the ANC leads coalitions, cities collapse. Where the DA leads coalition governments, the ANC works to bring them down.

In Johannesburg, the ANC and its partners have presided over financial deterioration, infrastructure failures, collapsing roads, unreliable water and electricity, and an administration increasingly unable to perform its most basic functions.

In eThekwini, years of ANC rule has produced decaying infrastructure, significant failures in water infrastructure, and chronic service-delivery failure.

In Tshwane, the DA-led coalition under Mayor Brink was making measurable progress in repairing the city. Rather than support that recovery, the ANC helped remove Brink and destabilise the city for its own political benefit. The ANC cannot overthrow a functioning coalition in Tshwane, lead failing coalitions in Johannesburg and eThekwini, and then blame “coalition politics” for the consequences of its own conduct.

These cities are not collapsing because the ANC lacks power, they are collapsing precisely because the ANC governs them or the ANC destabilises ones governed by other parties.

When voters denied the ANC a majority, its response was not to respect the result and help build stable, accountable governments. It manufactured fragile coalitions to keep itself in office and engineered motions of no confidence wherever DA-led governments began to make progress.

Now, polling at just 18% in Johannesburg, languishing in third place in eThekwini and trailing the DA in Tshwane, the ANC has suddenly discovered the virtues of “one-party control”.

What Masemola really means is total ANC control, regardless of how decisively voters reject it.

Even ANC voters do not support this fantasy. The latest SRF polling shows that 80% of ANC supporters favour cooperation with the DA where no party wins a majority. The ANC leadership is therefore not only ignoring the country; it is ignoring its own voters.

South Africans have now seen models in action: opportunistic ANC-led municipal coalitions that preside over collapse, and DA-led municipalities that deliver.

The choice in this election is not between coalitions and stability. The choice is between ANC-led collapse and DA-led government that gets municipalities working for all.