NATASHA MARRIAN: ANC’s last-minute power sharing deal rejected by DA

Early on Thursday the ANC presented the DA with a “power-sharing” deal for Gauteng metros, including Tshwane. The details of the deal are scant, but it came hours before a motion of no confidence in DA mayor Cilliers Brink was set to be debated and voted on in the Tshwane council. 

The ANC must have calculated that this would place the DA under pressure to accept the deal, to remove the rope from about Brink’s neck. But the DA didn’t bite. Business Day understands it told the ANC it needed time to obtain approval from its top leadership — its federal executive committee — and asked that the motion be withdrawn to allow for time to do this.

The ANC refused. The DA responded that should the motion go ahead there would be no further negotiations on power sharing in the province’s metros. This is a big move for the DA, if the decision holds. It means it is prepared to remain on the opposition benches in all Gauteng metros until the 2026 local government election. 

It’s not so simple for the ANC. The council reconvenes to elect a new mayor in seven days. It has to negotiate with ActionSA, the EFF and others that will form part of its government there, to select a mayoral candidate.

The ANC is suddenly sticking to its framework for coalitions, which holds that the party that received the largest number of votes in the election should hold the mayoral seat. But the framework appears to be a mere fallback position whipped out when convenient.

The ANC in Gauteng sidestepped it when it twice appointed disastrous mayors from the minuscule Al-Jama-ah and African Independent Congress to run Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni respectively. 

Appointing a new mayor is going to be tough — a candidate with the ability to turn around a city of Tshwane’s size and with problems of the magnitude it is facing, will be hard to find. 

It doesn’t help that the ANC itself is divided over who should take up the mayoral seat. There are some in the provincial leadership who want former councillor Kgosi Maepa to take up the post. He works in the office of Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi and is a close ally. However, those aligned to the faction with the numerical advantage in the provincial executive committee, led by finance MEC Lebogang Maile, do not want Maepa, arguing that he is not even a councillor in the city. 

Then there is ActionSA’s power play to contend with. Herman Mashaba’s party argued during negotiations that it should be given a shot at the mayorship and threatened to pull out of the deal it has with the ANC in Johannesburg if it is not considered for the post and the ANC entered into an agreement with the DA instead. 

In all of this manoeuvring, there is little consideration for the residents of Tshwane. The ANC left the city in disarray after violent protests erupted ahead of the 2016 local election when current speaker Thoko Didiza was its mayoral candidate, instead of former mayor Kgosientsho Ramokgopa. The DA’s Solly Msimanga took over, but left the post before the 2019 election to focus on his campaign for the post of premier. After Msimanga’s departure the DA appointed a string of disastrous candidates to lead Tshwane. 

Brink has been in the post for 18 months and sparked a glimmer of hope that Tshwane could be saved, with an improvement in its audit outcome for the first time in years. That was no mean feat given the state of the city’s finances. It owes Eskom more than R3bn, and there are doubts over its ability to fund future operations according to the latest report by auditor-general Tsakani Maluleke. 

What is clear is that the ANC in Gauteng wanted to take over the running of the province’s metros at any cost. The question is whether it was strategic to do so when they are in a state of collapse after the mayoral musical chairs of the past eight years. It is for this reason that DA provincial chair Fred Nel believes the party will now be in a better position to approach voters ahead of the upcoming 2026 election. 

With a mere two percentage point difference in support between the ANC and the DA in Tshwane in the last election, voters will in the end decide which party best handled the power play that resulted in Brink’s departure.

The more immediate question is how developments in the metros will affect the government of national unity, which has boosted business confidence and investor sentiment and is being used by President Cyril Ramaphosa to punt the country abroad.

• Marrian is Business Day editor at large.