The DA is right to play hardball in Tshwane: John Endres - Biznews

The Democratic Alliance (DA) is challenging the ANC’s governance strategy in Gauteng, using the ousting of Tshwane Mayor Cilliers Brink as leverage. The DA demands Brink’s reinstatement, threatening to withdraw support for municipal stabilisation in other metros. This approach pressures the ANC to collaborate, while also highlighting Gauteng’s reliance on alliances with the EFF. With local elections looming, the DA’s move sets the stage for an intense political contest, testing the ANC’s strategy and stability.

John Endres

The Democratic Alliance has taken a hard line on the ousting of Tshwane Mayor Cilliers Brink, telling the ANC that unless it helped to reinstate him, the DA will not participate any further in working with the ANC to stabilise municipal government in other metros.

This is a strategically astute move. It signals to the ANC that the DA is not a pushover and will not allow itself to be the larger party’s doormat. But it does so in a way that does not jeopardise the Government of National Unity at the national level, which both the DA and the ANC have a vested interest in making work (although the ANC needs occasional reminding).

The DA’s stance is also smart because it brings the next electoral contest into play: the local government elections, which are likely to be held in November 2026. The ANC’s electoral drop, from 57% in 2019 to 40% in 2024, was a salutary reminder to the party not to take its voters for granted. But the memory of the voters’ rebuke fades over time and has to be refreshed regularly.

The DA is therefore presenting the ANC with the following choice: either work with us to stabilise the shaky metros, for which our price is your support for our man in Tshwane; or take your chances and try get service delivery sufficiently on track without our help in the next two years to get the voters back on your side. Given the ANC’s track record of mostly catastrophic governance at the local level, it is a risky gamble for the party to take.

A further component of the political calculus is the special position of the Gauteng provincial ANC. This has found itself at odds with the national ANC at various points since the formation of the Government of National Unity. While the ANC and the DA are working together at the national level, this arrangement is anathema to the Gauteng ANC.

The Gauteng party leadership purposefully scuppered its opportunity to work with the DA in the provincial government by offering it a bad deal, which the DA rightly walked away from. The Gauteng ANC now finds itself leading a minority government at provincial level, controlling just 32 of 80 seats in the legislature with the support of the Inkatha Freedom Party, the Patriotic Alliance, and Rise Msanzi.

Communist premier
The communist premier of Gauteng, Panyaza Lesufi, has to rely on the support of the Economic Freedom Fighters, a party he is close to, on a case-by-case basis. He has also been instrumental in ensuring the DA is shut out of power in the three Gauteng metros, namely Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane. To achieve this he has relied on the support of the EFF and ActionSA.

ANC leaders at head office keen to extend the ANC-DA deal to the metros – rumoured to include Fikile Mbalula, former Gauteng Premier David Makhura, and President Ramaphosa himself – were stymied by the Gauteng ANC. It will have pointed out that allowing the DA a role in government was giving it the opportunity to bolster its reputation on the back of good performance from its ministers and mayors, thereby strengthening a political opponent.

The Gauteng ANC is therefore pursuing an alternative course. It is aiming to normalise ANC-EFF cooperation in Gauteng, giving this constellation the opportunity to demonstrate improved governance and an EFF that presents itself as a dependable, capable and rational political partner. The Gauteng ANC can argue that the party as a whole benefits from the opportunity to test both options: working with the DA (at national level) or with the EFF (in Gauteng). And it can run the test without roiling markets unduly.

Given Lesufi’s alleged presidential ambitions, the unspoken implication of his plan is that Ramaphosa and his allies could be deposed at the ANC national conference in 2027 on the back of good performance from the ANC-EFF combo in Gauteng. Lesufi and his radical allies could then be brought to power. This would allow the afterburners to be lit on the National Democratic Revolution, accompanied by hefty doses of expropriation, nationalisation and heavy-handed state intervention in the economy.

Indecisive and curiously passive
Will their plan work? The ANC Effophiles from Gauteng have some points in their favour. They have allies on the National Executive Committee of the ANC who would like to see them succeed. They also benefit from dealing with a party leadership that is often indecisive and curiously passive, and therefore easily defied. Furthermore, they can easily accuse the national leadership of betraying the National Democratic Revolution by collaborating with the white enemy and the running dogs of capitalism.

That accusation is especially painful to ANC members brought up in the tradition of the struggle and the advance towards first socialism, and then communism for South Africa. It could be brought out to great effect ahead of the ANC’s national conference in 2027 to shift the balance of forces and elect an EFF-friendly leadership.

However, before that happens there is an earlier hurdle to cross, and that is the local government elections. Gauteng residents of Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane are in for a rough ride until then, because there is little reason to expect an improvement in service delivery. The Lesufi administration and the ANC-run metros have been long on promises and short on delivery.

If this pattern holds, the Gauteng ANC will continue to underdeliver and is likely to be punished by voters in 2026, which will weaken Lesufi’s position and strengthen that of those parts of the ANC that favour cooperation with the DA, while also strengthening the DA itself. Against this backdrop, it is astute on the part of the DA to play hardball on the question of Cilliers Brink’s mayorship – it forms part of a much larger political game.

Collapsing levels of support
A further important component of this line of reasoning is the collapsing levels of support for the EFF, placed at just 6% at the national level in September polling by the Social Research Foundation – down from 9.5% in the May election. By tying their fortunes to the EFF, Lesufi and his allies are risking dragging ANC support deep underwater, a considerable threat to the party’s prospects in the 2029 national and provincial elections and one that the national party leadership appears insufficiently aware of.

Gauteng residents are at the centre of all this. They will have to grit their teeth for a while longer and put up with poor service delivery and continued infrastructure decay for now. But they will have the chance to make their feelings known when they go to the ballot box in 2026.

John Endres is CEO of the Institute of Race Relations 

https://www.biznews.com/leadership/2024/10/11/da-hardball-tshwane-john-endres

This article was first published on the Daily Friend.