(Graphic: John McCann/M&G)
South Africa has managed to form a stable multiparty government at the national level, but our municipalities still need to be fixed. October’s news coverage shows that municipal machinations over coalitions dominate media attention.
How do we stop the mayor-go-round and create stable municipal coalition governments that can focus on service delivery?
The ANC and Democratic Alliance’s (DA) names both feature prominently as keywords in my database of top online news articles from News24 in October. (Unfortunately, technical difficulties hampered us from collecting articles from other news sources.) A little digging shows that both parties’ coverage centres on horse-trading in municipal coalitions.
The name statistically most strongly associated with the ANC in the October news is that of ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula, while those most strongly associated with the DA are federal council chairperson Helen Zille and its leader, John Steenhuisen. All three have made numerous pronouncements about municipal coalitions. The easiest way to dissect these is municipality by municipality.
Tshwane
The name “Tshwane” shows a strong association with the ANC in October’s news.
On 26 September, the ANC, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and ActionSA clubbed together to remove the DA’s Cilliers Brink as Tshwane mayor. Zille gave Mbalula an ultimatum to return Brink to office, or all negotiations between the DA and ANC on creating stable coalitions would stop. Steenhuisen threatened to ask President Cyril Ramaphosa to intervene to bring Brink back.
As the 14-working-day deadline by which parties in Tshwane had to form a new municipal government was approaching on 8 October, Mbalula announced there was “no deal” between the two parties. Instead, ActionSA’s Nasiphi Moya was elected mayor, and a government comprising the ANC, ActionSA and the EFF was installed. The ructions in Tshwane continue, with three DA councillors forcibly removed from a council meeting on 31 October.
True to Zille’s ultimatum, the breach of trust between the ANC and DA in Tshwane has halted cooperation between the two parties in other municipalities around the country.
KwaDukuza
In the KwaDukuza municipality, centred on Stanger in KwaZulu-Natal, the ANC had a problem: they needed to remove their own mayor, Lindile Nhaca, who refused to follow party orders, but their 29 councillors don’t have a majority. As a result of this situation and others in which councillors were needed to vote for or against different mayors, the word “councillors” showed a strong association with “ANC” in October’s news.
The ANC needed to persuade councillors from other parties to vote against Nhaca in a vote of no confidence. The DA refused to help, with their provincial chairperson, Dean Macpherson, saying, “They can’t remove our mayor in Tshwane and expect us to help them remove theirs in KwaDukuza.”
In the end, the EFF and Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) helped the ANC remove Nhaca, with ANC provincial chairperson Siboniso Duma labelling the DA as “self-serving”.
Nelson Mandela Bay
Meanwhile, in two other notable municipalities, the ANC has taken back mayoral posts from tiny coalition partners. In Nelson Mandela Bay, Babalwa Lobishe from the ANC swopped places with the Northern Alliance’s Gary van Niekerk: she became mayor; he became deputy mayor.
This happened after, in Van Niekerk’s words, “the ANC regional leadership engaged us as a coalition”. This is one of several cases in which ANC regional structures have intervened in local governments, causing the word “regional” to be strongly associated with the ANC in October’s news.
Mogale City
In Mogale City, which includes Krugersdorp and surrounding areas in Gauteng, Danny Thupane, the African Transformation Movement’s (ATM) sole councillor in the municipality, resigned as mayor to avoid a no-confidence vote. He was replaced by the ANC’s Lucky Sele as the ANC, EFF, IFP and Pan Africanist Congress agreed to form a coalition in the municipality. The EFF’s collaboration with the ANC in Tshwane and Mogale City resulted in the two parties’ names being strongly associated together. Sele is the municipality’s third mayor in as many years. He will need to do some dirty work as he inherits the leadership of a municipality responsible for a long-running sewage disaster.
The return of ANC mayors in these hung municipalities can be seen as a positive development in some ways. Many mayors from little parties are a hangover from previous agreements between the ANC and EFF, in which the two parties agreed to cooperate in municipalities on condition that a mayor from a third party was chosen.
This has been a recipe for incompetence and instability in municipalities, as the example of the City of Johannesburg bears out all too well. A mayor from a well-represented party should, in theory, be able to lead with greater support for a longer period.
Western Cape
The DA has faced coalition trouble from another angle: the Freedom Front Plus (FF+). The troubled relationship between these two parties is highlighted by the close association between their names in October’s news.
Since August, DA-FF+ coalitions in two Western Cape municipalities, Oudtshoorn and Langeberg, have collapsed.
In the Swellendam municipality on 30 September, FF+ councillors almost joined a vote of no confidence against the DA mayor but were reined in by their national leadership. Zille accused some FF+ councillors in the Western Cape of going “rogue” and conspiring with the ANC to overthrow municipalities.
Mbalula vs Lesufi?
Since before the troubles in Tshwane, a fundamental stumbling block in the ANC’s relationship with the DA has been Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi, who formed a minority government of provincial unity in the province without the DA.
In early October, Mbalula tried to institute disciplinary charges against Lesufi over remarks construed as criticising the government of national unity (GNU). But he changed his mind after hearing Lesufi speak “glowingly about the GNU” on a podcast.
News24 reported on 31 October that Lesufi boasted that his provincial government is better than the GNU. The Gauteng provincial government immediately issued a statement refuting this as inaccurate reporting and accusing News24 of “creating tension between the premier, the president and, by extension, the African National Congress (ANC) leadership”.
Needed: A stability pact
Whatever the case, the Gauteng government of provincial unity set an unfortunate precedent: the GNU parties work together at a national level but are free to squabble it out at other levels of government. This needlessly diverts attention away from service delivery.
The GNU parties shelved partisan interests and joined hands to give South Africans the stable government they need. So far, they have improved investor sentiment, strengthened the rand and kept the lights on at Eskom.
But South Africa’s municipalities are on the frontline of service delivery. It is common cause that they are in crisis, especially where financial management is concerned. If they are allowed to languish in instability, electricity and water supply will continue to be unreliable, roads will continue to crumble and people on the ground won’t see the benefit of multiparty cooperation at a national level.
If the GNU parties are serious about putting South Africans first, their priority should be laying aside their partisan interests and forming a stability pact to cooperate in all hung provinces and municipalities. Nothing less than this will stop the mayor-go-round and allow service delivery to recover in the country.
Ian Siebörger is a senior lecturer in the department of linguistics and applied language studies in the faculty of humanities at Rhodes University.