Fixing Municipalities Is Now a Team Sport

Every political party wants to govern with an outright majority to showcase an unadulterated brand of government. The reality, however, is that coalitions look set to remain part of our political landscape for a long time to come, especially in hotly contested hung councils like Johannesburg. 

Voters need to consider their political choices within the context of the team sport that is coalitions and, most critically, which candidates parties put forward to lead them. You wouldn’t want to bet on a striker to score if you knew that nobody trusted them enough to pass them the ball, right?

Let me clarify from the outset that ActionSA is amenable to working with any party that can produce a credible plan that will provide reliable services to all residents, that will declare corruption public enemy number one, and that will address the crisis of illegal immigration in our cities.

It is precisely why Helen Zille’s announcement of her intention to coalesce with ActionSA, the IFP, the ACDP and the FF Plus requires careful examination against her track record in coalitions in Joburg. Even though she has only recently moved to Joburg for the first time since the advent of democracy, as Chairperson of the Federal Council, Zille has been the final say on coalitions in the DA since 2021.

It therefore follows that her impact on coalitions has been both considerable and measurable, and warrants assessment by any serious Johannesburg voter.

On the eve of the inaugural council meetings to elect mayors after the 2021 local government elections, the DA negotiating teams (reporting to Zille) collapsed coalition talks with all other parties. This followed a fraught negotiation process in which the DA dictated a take-it-or-leave-it structure of a coalition that not one other party was willing to accept. With the reality of this collapse returning the ANC to governments across Gauteng, political parties came together to teach the DA a lesson, including the EFF, and put the DA into mayoralties without coalition partners, agreements or majorities.

Some may still even remember how the DA’s Tania Campbell was shocked to be elected mayor after the DA’s mayoral candidate had resigned her council seat to return to Parliament, believing she would not be elected. As a result of this intervention by ActionSA, the EFF, IFP, ACDP, PA, FF Plus and others, this is how the 2021 coalitions began, but the dysfunctional and ill-fated foundation of the coalitions had been set because they had to be formed out of crisis rather than a clear shared agenda.

A year later, parties in the coalition expressed their frustration at the DA’s take-it-or-leave-it approach, which was exacerbated by the fact that they held every senior position in the government because of how they were elected against their will at those first council meetings. Rather than accommodating the PA and IFP, who were particularly aggrieved, Zille refused to let the DA budge. On the eve of the council meeting at which this coalition was going to collapse, the now DA Federal Chairperson, Solly Msimanga, published an article calling the PA rent-seekers in what can only be understood as a deliberate laying of the final straw to break the camel’s back. 

After this collapse, no fewer than four attempts were made to restore the coalition behind DA mayoral candidate Mpho Phalatse. On the final attempt, the Patriotic Alliance had agreed to terms which saw ActionSA (and not the DA) give away two of its three MMC positions to the PA in order to bring them back. Gayton McKenzie even publicly announced his return to this coalition, and the DA negotiating team signed off. Why wouldn’t they, when ActionSA had made all the sacrifices necessary for Mpho Phalatse to return as mayor? Despite this, Zille cancelled the agreement over the heads of her own structures in Gauteng.

In the wake of the establishment of the GNU in June 2024, when a coalition between the DA, ActionSA, ACDP, IFP and FF Plus was still in place in Tshwane, it emerged that the DA was in talks with the ANC to translate the GNU into the province and the metros. Nearly three years after supporting DA-led coalitions in Tshwane, which have produced regressing adverse audit findings, cholera outbreaks killing over 30 people, and one failure after the next, Zille’s approach was to use the GNU to displace their coalition partners.

Of course, who can forget the DA announcing the Moonshot Pact, which became the Multi-Party Charter, with the stated intention to create a pre-election agreement between parties to provide an alternative to the ANC. Throughout the duration of the charter, DA leaders, including Zille, spoke of plans to coalesce with the ANC while using the charter and its partners to campaign on a change mandate.

Included in the Multi-Party Charter agreement, signed to much fanfare, was the following provision:

“Therefore, we will not entertain any working arrangement or co-governing agreements with the ANC or any rival formations, and we will not vote for any office bearers of the ANC, nominated either directly or indirectly, at any inaugural meetings of the National Assembly, National Council of Provinces, and Provincial Legislatures.”

Perhaps after reading this, one can understand how Zille’s announcement on Wednesday evening that she will consider coalitions only with ActionSA, the IFP, ACDP and FF Plus has to be viewed within a particular context. This context is that Zille and the DA like to associate with this grouping of parties during campaigns while planning coalitions with the ANC. In coalitions, the DA, and Zille particularly, have proven to be impossible to work with, and residents have paid the price for it repeatedly.

Compare this to Herman Mashaba’s record in running coalitions in Joburg. In 2016, the DA’s FedEx, a body on which Mashaba did not even serve but Zille did, agreed to set up a minority coalition with the EFF in Joburg. Mashaba ran that coalition for three years, the greatest period of stability that the city has ever seen under a coalition government, an era where service delivery and the fight against corruption saw real, tangible progress. Coalition partners were treated with respect, meaningful power-sharing was implemented, and every budget was a multi-party expression of solutions to address the complex challenges in Joburg. 

Just as in many other areas of the country, voters in Joburg will need to consider what kind of parties they want to lead coalitions, because the last 10 years have revealed, in technicolour detail, that some leaders have the ability to run stable and effective coalitions, and others simply do not.

ActionSA Immigration: Known for a hardline stance against undocumented migration.