Genevieve Quintal:
• While the ANC struggles on the opposition benches, other parties are also having adjustment disorders
Before Johannesburg’s DA mayor, Herman Mashaba, could cut the ribbon at the opening of a R22m clinic in Alexandra in February, protesters — some wearing ANC T-shirts — burnt tyres and blockaded roads. What should have been a celebratory event for the community turned into a disaster.
In Nelson Mandela Bay in the Eastern Cape, United Democratic Movement (UDM) deputy mayor Mongameli Bobani and his colleague Thoko Tshangela, who hold the balance of power between the ANC and the DA, are able to collapse a council meeting by not arriving — because they disagreed with DA mayor Athol Trollip.
In Tshwane, run by DA mayor Solly Msimanga, council sittings have been disrupted by ANC members, now sitting in the opposition benches, with some meetings turning violent.
This is the new politics of coalition governments in which political actors have had to manoeuvre since the August 2016 local government elections, when the DA took control of four metro councils.
The DA has signed coalition agreements with four parties — the UDM, Congress of the People, Freedom Front Plus and the African Christian Democratic Party. However, the DA gained control in most municipalities where it has coalition arrangements because the EFF decided against entering coalition deals but resolved to vote with opposition parties to enable the formation of a council and remove the ANC from power.
The ANC has not adapted well to opposition politics, especially in the three metros it lost. The party has been preoccupied with ensuring the coalition governments ultimately collapse and are put under provincial administration.
The result is that this five-year term of local government will be characterised by power battles between parties rather than a fresh round of service delivery.
An ANC strategy document, allegedly presented at the party’s Tshwane lekgotla after the local government elections, states that the party wants to take back the capital city by ensuring it “exploits” situations that would “accelerate the toppling” of the DA.
A 2016 Tshwane meeting descended into chaos, forcing the speaker to call in metro police officers and security personnel to restore order in the chambers. Gauteng MEC for local government Paul Mashatile, who is also ANC Gauteng chairman, had tried to calm the situation.
Mashatile also had to intervene in Mogale City when the DA-led coalition tried to remove the ANC speaker and replace him with one of its own people. The DA and ANC share power in the municipality, with a DA mayor and an ANC speaker’s seat. The DA had to reverse its decision because the party had not followed proper procedure, but there is no knowing how long this will hold.
The DA claims the ANC is trying to push the Mogale City municipality into disarray so that Mashatile’s office is forced to put it under administration.
Johannesburg council meetings have collapsed several times and in February, protesters invaded the chamber. DA speaker Vasco da Gama blamed the ANC for the protests, but some council members say the problem is simply that it is hard to find consensus on matters, given the distance between the parties.
DA federal executive chairman James Selfe, who was instrumental in negotiating coalition agreements after the elections, says it is clear it has been difficult for the ANC to adapt to opposition politics. The result is that it has not made the most of opportunities to take on the DA and its programmes in a serious way.
“Particularly in Johannesburg and Tshwane, they still have sources of information in the administration because of the nature of cadre deployment, but they have not made full use of the opportunities that they could have and that has given us the time to consolidate into our role as government,” he says.
“It has given us time to think strategically and plan strategically and I think we are getting better at being government, which is not our strong suit.”
The ANC in Gauteng has said it was working to regain control of municipalities now governed by DA-led coalitions.
Gauteng ANC secretary Hope Papo says the party continues to enjoy support in most wards, even in those won by its political opponents.
Commenting on the coalitions, political analyst Mcebisi Ndletyana says the Johannesburg agreement between the DA and the EFF is the one most likely to break down, probably because of Mashaba’s political inexperience and not because of the ANC.
The Johannesburg ANC “had continuity, Parks Tau has remained…. He’s able to marshal a strategy and command the troops with a sense of direction and they know where Mashaba is weak and they are exploiting that,” he says.
But in Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay, the ANC leadership is weak and Msimanga and Trollip are politically stronger than Mashaba.
“In Tshwane, you have a good mayor, but weak opposition leadership. [In] Nelson Mandela Bay, yes a strong mayor and poor opposition leadership. In addition to having poor leadership, there is a lot of infighting in the ANC. It’s a party in disarray,” Ndletyana says.
There were rumours of a collapse of the coalition in Nelson Mandela Bay earlier in 2017, when Bobani and Tshangela boycotted a council meeting along with the ANC, but UDM leader Bantu Holomisa has quashed any talk of a breakdown in the relationship.
He says an “administrative” issue, the appointment of a municipal manager, led to Bobani and Tshangela not attending the meeting. This has been sorted out after a meeting with the DA.
“We are trying to sort out the mess we inherited from the ANC, but it looks like the mayor and his deputy didn’t sing from the same hymn … on how to sort it out,” Holomisa says.
The UDM leader says his party has “administrative and procedural differences” with the DA, but it has agreed to not boycott council meetings.
Ndletyana says Bobani is “seemingly unreliable” and is vulnerable to ANC advances, but Holomisa is a strong leader and will keep him in line.
An ANC-led coalition in Ekurhuleni could be on the brink of collapse if the party does not accede to the demand from the African Independent Congress (AIC) that Matatiele be returned to KwaZulu-Natal. The AIC has given the ANC until the end of March to agree to timeframes for the move.
Following a demarcation, Matatiele was moved from KwaZulu-Natal to the Eastern Cape in 2005 and the AIC has been fighting to have the decision overturned. The ANC managed to hold on
to Ekurhuleni because of coalition agreements with the AIC, the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania and the Patriotic Alliance. It also entered into an unlikely coalition with the DA in Kannaland in the Western Cape, but the relationship has turned sour and the ANC has retreated.
Western Cape ANC secretary Faiz Jacobs says “this relationship is untenable as the ANC and DA are fundamentally in different political corners. The ANC provincial executive committee … began a process with its councillors to move [the] ANC out of the relationship with [the] DA.”
He says the ANC has recalled its mayor and deputy.
The next test for coalitionrun municipalities will be the passing of budgets. This is where the EFF is planning to exert its influence and could hold municipalities to ransom, which is what the ANC is pinning its hopes on.
A stalemate could force provincial politicians to step in, take control and put power back into the hands of the ANC.
“We vote with opposition parties to minimise and to undo the ruling party…. We’re not going to vote here for the ANC,” says EFF national spokesman and MP Mbuyiseni Ndlozi.
“But that doesn’t mean when these people do budgets, we’re not … going to disagree, we are going to fight.”
THE ANC HAS NOT ADAPTED WELL TO OPPOSITION POLITICS, ESPECIALLY IN THE THREE METROS IT LOST