It’s time to move on, says Phalatse
DA handed city to ANC, claims ActionSA chair Beaumont
As political parties continue debating who is to be blamed for the collapse of the DA-led administration in Johannesburg, the former mayor thinks everyone must move on.
Speaking at the launch of her campaign to become DA leader, Phalatse was coy about whether she was happy with how her party supported her attempts to stay mayor but accepted that the matter was now water under the bridge.
“Unfortunately my party’s Fedex [Federal Executive] has decided only a few people are allowed to speak on the events of the last few weeks. My name is not on that list.”
Pressed further, she said: “I am disappointed that we failed to save Johannesburg, a city that is broken and a city that was well on its way to repair under the multiparty government that I led. But it has happened and I have to move on.
“We could have done better. It did not have to end the way it ended but in the greater scheme of things, I am a member of the DA and the highest decision-making body is the Fedex of the party and a decision and a position was adopted by the Fedex and I have to abide by that decision.”
ActionSA national chairperson Michael Beaumont is adamant the DA must carry the blame for “handing Johannesburg to the ANC”.
This as the ping pong blame game continues among political parties that delivered the DA’s Mpho Phalatse the Joburg mayoral chains.
The fallout follows the voting out of Phalatse last week and her being replaced by AlJamah’s Thapelo Amad.
The DA told Sunday Times last weekend the blame lay at the door of the PA and ActionSA for Phalatse’s ousting.
According to the DA, the PA’s demands for two mayoral committee positions to vote in favour of Phalatse were unreasonable.
It accused ActionSA of plotting to seize power for its own mayor working with the IFP and Freedom Front Plus, among others, while “driving a wedge” between the blue party and its deployee Phalatse.
Beaumont fired back, saying it is the DA’s hardline negotiation approach that handed power to the ANC, the believed puppet masters of the incumbent Joburg mayor.
He said the DA could not wish away the reality that the PA were the kingmakers in Joburg, who should be accommodated at all costs to keep out the ANC and the EFF.
“The DA decided that as far as their ‘values’ were concerned, the cost of sustaining the coalition was too much, yet the far worse outcome of passing the cost of an ANC coalition in Joburg and EFF coalition in Ekurhuleni onto residents of these two cities clearly presented no such moral challenge,” said Beaumont.
“On the other hand ActionSA, along with the IFP, ACDP, FF Plus and UIM, adopted a very different point of view. It goes without saying we all would have preferred if the seats needed to sustain the coalition in Joburg lay with a party or parties that made coalition decisions based on shared principle and not specific positions...”
Beaumont said they were baffled that the DA was so “determined to allow the ANC and EFF back into power” that it even rejected ActionSA’s offer “to surrender two of our three MMC positions to the PA when the DA would not compromise”.
If the DA persists with the negotiation tactics it displayed in Joburg, which led to the removal of Phalatse, said Beaumont, the hopes of dethroning the ANC at national and provincial polls next year may prove a pipe dream.