DA must strengthen relationship with Bay coalition partners

A week ago, the ANC’s reign in Nelson Mandela Bay came to a chaotic end when it was ousted by opposition parties after the successful passing of a no-confidence motion against the former mayor, Eugene Johnson.

Though the motion was rejected by the EFF and Patriotic Alliance, which together have 10 seats, the 58 councillors from all three parties, including the ANC, could not contend with the 62 who supported the motion.

The ANC’s loss of control in the Bay brings the number of metros that are governed through a DA-led coalition to four, the others being Ekurhuleni, Johannesburg and Tshwane.

The DA governs Cape Town with an outright majority.

The ANC now runs only three out of SA’s eight metros.

Though its loss of power at local level has progressively rewritten the narrative of the dominant party-political regime in SA, the reality is that coalition governments are proving to be in a perennial crisis, posing a legitimate threat to the institutional stability of municipalities.

Coalitions are not a new phenomenon in SA — their foundations were laid by the government of national unity at the dawn of our democracy — but the 2016 local government elections set parameters for their entrenchment, particularly in the metros.

It was then that the ANC’s hegemony was shattered.

Though coalitions can theoretically undermine single-party dominance and strengthen oversight, the experience has been very different for SA, where coalitions have deepened instability and service delivery failures.

There is no indication that the coalitions established after the 2021 local government elections will be any better than the previous administrations, which were marred by chaos.

The Bay was one of the sites of this chaos.

In just five years, the metro elected three mayors —

Athol Trollip, the late Mongameli Bobani and Nqaba Bhanga — with Thsonono Buyeye having been an interim mayor.

The average term for the elected mayors was just over one year.

Speakers were also removed, with the first, Jonathan Lawack, having been voted out just two years after his election.

The instability that was wrought by this chaos extended beyond council and into the heart of the administration, where city managers were also put on suspension and subjected to investigations.

The result of all this chaos was the council repeatedly failing to pass its budget within the legislated time frames.

The metro also lost R503m in grant funding from the National Treasury.

The money had been earmarked for, among other things, infrastructure development and measures to ease the drought.

The impact on service delivery had far-reaching consequences that continue to be experienced today.

The removal of the ANC’s Johnson should send shivers down all our spines because it signals the beginning of the repeat of the chaos that the Bay experienced in the previous administration.

The ANC will undoubtedly continue to seek power, as is the case across all metros.

And we know from experience that coalition partners are not always in it for the long haul.

Moreover, some of the parties that are now in coalition with the DA in the Bay are not its reliable allies.

The UDM, which voted in favour of the motion to remove Johnson, has in the past voted with the ANC and EFF to remove a DA-led coalition that it was part of.

The DA, if it is to govern effectively, must urgently strengthen its relationship with its coalition partners.

It must avoid the sins of arrogance that led to its partners voting to remove its speaker in the City of Johannesburg just a few weeks ago.

If the party cannot do this, then Bay residents must brace themselves for another chaotic and damaging coalition.