Democratic Alliance mayor Cilliers Brink was removed through a vote of no confidence brought by the ANC and supported by ActionSA.
(Frennie Shivambu/Gallo Images)
ANC Tshwane regional leaders have accused the Democratic Alliance (DA) of trying to cause divisions between Gauteng provincial chair Panyaza Lesufi and President Cyril Ramaphosa.
They say DA federal council chair Helen Zille has attempted to portray Lesufi as defying Ramaphosa over the removal of Cilliers Brink as Tshwane mayor last week to create a rift between the ANC in Gauteng and its national leadership.
ANC Tshwane regional secretary George Matjila told the Mail & Guardian this week that there was no discord between the various levels of the party over the motion of no confidence to remove Brink.
Matjila said the Tshwane region had introduced the idea of the motion, which was then supported by the province and ratified by the national leadership.
“In a sense we are reading from the same hymn book but national has the last say on matters,” he said, however declining to comment on whether the ANC was willing to work with the DA in the province.
Another Tshwane ANC leader, who asked to remain anonymous as he is not mandated to speak to the media, accused the DA of creating the “false notion” that Lesufi is “running amok” and defying Ramaphosa and the party leadership.
He said the DA was trying to isolate Lesufi by using the narrative that the ANC was divided in the belief that this would assist it in securing coalitions with the ANC in Gauteng and its metros.
“The DA is trying to say there is a Gauteng mafia faction that doesn’t want them. The public is used to this thing of ANC factions of Zuma but that thing is no longer there in the ANC,” the Tshwane leader said.
Lesufi was also being targeted by the DA for his backing of the Basic Education Law Amendment Bill, the source added.
“He is now a premier and he is a potential president. They want to push that there is a faction between Panyaza [Lesufi] and the president. There’s nothing like that. They also have this thing called the Alexandra mafia, they now say he is part of that, which started when they lost Brink,” he said.
“They are trying to create something for [ANC deputy president Paul] Mashatile and Panyaza to go out of the race if they want to stand for the presidency. They say Mashatile and Panyaza are the same thing and are against the GNU [government of national unity].”
The ANC is due to hold its next elective national conference in 2027, at which a new president and national executive committee will be elected.
The spat between Lesufi, the DA in Gauteng and Zille emanated from the failure of the two parties to reach an agreement to form a government of provincial unity. It escalated last week after the ANC and ActionSA removed Brink.
The motion of no confidence was passed with the support of 120 councillors from the ANC, ActionSA and the EFF, while 87 councillors from the DA, Freedom Front Plus and the African Christian Democratic Party voted against it.
Last week, Zille wrote to ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula and negotiator David Makhura demanding that Brink be returned to his position, warning that failure to do so could undermine talks on stabilising hung metros.
Zille accused Lesufi of pressuring the ANC national leadership to keep the DA out of power.
“The reason is that the Lesufi faction rules Gauteng and they ignore their national leadership,” she wrote in the letter.
“I am aware of the significant efforts you both made over the past two weeks to persuade your Gauteng colleagues to facilitate a wide-ranging ‘stability pact’ involving a range of hung metro councils in the run-up to the local government elections in 2026.”
The ANC leader said Zille’s belief that there was a faction in the ANC led by Lesufi that opposed the GNU was “wrong” and that the decision to remove Brink was taken with the approval of the party’s national working committee (NWC).
“The NWC instructed Tshwane on Thursday to give them a go-ahead to remove Brink. If Brink wants to blame someone, they must blame the ANC, not Panyaza. He is not a councillor and not a member of the NWC. They must go and blame those people who made the approval,” the ANC leader said.
He said that the ANC in Gauteng wanted to keep its distance from the DA.
“They took out the ANC in a vote of no confidence in all municipalities in the Western Cape, so why should the ANC not do it in Gauteng? We are old horses in these politics; we are not going to be dribbled by Zille.”
ANC national spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri said there is “no sense of division” in the party as there was “constant consultation with the leadership of the organisation through the secretary general and the national officials by provinces”.
“The DA has no qualification whatsoever to be able to make that diagnosis. They wouldn’t know of the culture and traditions of the ANC that involve thoroughgoing consultations,” Bhengu-Motsiri said.
“We would urge the DA to really desist and refrain from attempting to analyse the ANC from the lens of the DA.”
Matjila criticised the city of Tshwane employees who had hurled insults at and booed Brink after he was removed as mayor as politics needed to be kept out of the workplace.
In an internal memo to staff, city manager Johann Mettler said the behaviour of the workers who heckled Brink was “insensitive, humiliating, degrading, inflammatory, offensive and downright despicable”.
Mettler said while staff had the right to associate with the political party of their choice, and express this right through voting in an election, “the workplace is not a party-political arena”.
He said that, should there be further incidents of this nature, he would “have no choice but to implement consequence management”.