Big ambitions, coalitions and opposition
Dear DM168 readers,
It was British Prime Minister Harold Wilson who said “a week is a long time in politics” during one of the UK’s crises in the 1960s. This phrase was particularly apt this week as the ANC, the EFF and smaller parties started hammering the DA-led coalition governments in Gauteng’s largest metro, the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality, and the country’s administrative capital, the City of Tshwane.
In Johannesburg the coalition government led by the DA was threatened after minority parties joined forces in an attempt to oust executive mayor Mpho Phalatse and council speaker Vasco da Gama. The minority parties, which were backed by the EFF and the ANC, did not succeed in ousting the mayor, but they still have their sights set on the speaker.
In Tshwane, DA mayor Randall Williams escaped being ousted on 25 August pending an investigation into his role in pushing for a private business proposal to convert the City’s coal-powered plants to use biogas. Williams’s detractors in the ANC and the EFF are accusing him of corruption and arrogance. As a resident of this city, I would like to see evidence to prove these allegations, because whatever the outcome of the probe into Williams, our city definitely needs an energy plan that is more dependent on renewable energy than on the municipality and Eskom’s ageing infrastructure.
Both Phalatse and Williams have survived this week’s attacks, but the game plan of the EFF and the ANC is clearly to dislodge the coalition governments. Quite tellingly, Julius Malema, in a televised press conference, said his party would consider going into a coalition government with the ANC after the 2024 elections if the ANC did not muster 50%, but that they would only support the ANC if it was led by its current treasurer and acting secretary-general, Paul
Mashatile. Is this possible? Could we have a President Mashatile with Deputy President Malema? The weakening of the ANC has left the field wide open for several possibilities and permutations if voters do turn away from the governing party in the 2024 elections, and if Cyril Ramaphosa loses the ANC presidency at the party’s national conference at the end of this year. It also means the political parties involved in current coalition governments at local government level need to get their acts together if they want to have a chance of governing South Africa after the 2024 elections. They need water-tight partnership agreements aimed at serving citizens, not internal power plays.
Write to me at heather@dailymaverick.co.za
Yours in defence of truth and good governance, Heather