Some in the ANC’s senior ranks have resigned themselves to a possible future on the opposition benches ahead of this week’s down-to-the-wire talks to form coalition governments in dozens of municipal councils.
Coalition talks have kicked into high gear in about 70 so-called hung municipalities, in which no party emerged with an outright majority. This follows local government elections earlier in November that marked the ANC’s worst electoral showing since 1994.
The outcome of the talks could either put the ANC, DA or EFF firmly in the opposition benches until the next municipal poll in 2026, with some in the governing party telling Business Day that they "are resigned to" such a possibility.
Both the DA and ActionSA have said they will not work with the ANC to form a government in some of the biggest municipalities, including Johannesburg, Tshwane, eThekwini, Ekurhuleni and Nelson Mandela Bay.
DA leader John Steenhuisen has previously said it would be impossible for the DA to work with the ANC as the liberation movement does not share its core liberal values.
But a formal sitting of the ANC and DA has been scheduled, according to insiders from both parties, adding that political heavyweights spent the past week applying their minds to what they will demand and their non-negotiables as well as to what they can offer to potential partners.
While some in the ANC and DA top brass want the two biggest political parties to work together to improve governance and strengthen anti-corruption efforts in SA, Business Day reliably understands that the DA prefers to work with the ANC only after the general election
in 2024.
That possibly binds together the fate of the ANC with the EFF, which Business Day reported last week had been pushing for three-way coalition talks including ActionSA. It wanted a power-sharing deal under which it would be handed the mayorship of Tshwane, ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba would be Joburg mayor and the ANC would retain Ekurhuleni.
But Mashaba, who resigned as Joburg city mayor and DA member in 2019, went on record this weekend formally rejecting the EFF’s offer for it to push the ANC to make him Joburg mayor again. DA, ActionSA and Freedom Front Plus are said to be at an advanced stage to lead a possible opposition coalition in Joburg and Tshwane.
With the EFF’s support, the ANC could have the 50% plus 1 required for an outright majority in Ekurhuleni and eThekwini and could form coalitions with other parties to take Joburg and Nelson Mandela Bay.
Such a possibility has reportedly spurred an ANC faction flying the flag for former president Jacob Zuma’s ill-defined radical economic transformation policy to urge the party’s top decision-making body, the national executive committee (NEC), to enter into a broad coalition with the EFF in hung municipalities.
But NEC members rejected the proposal from the faction, which stood in opposition to party president Cyril Ramaphosa in the internal leadership election in 2017.
Alongside trying to convince the EFF and ActionSA, the two biggest parties may in some cases need smaller parties — including the IFP, Freedom Front Plus, Patricia de Lille’s GOOD and the Patriotic Alliance — to cobble together coalition governments. Business Day understands that some smaller parties want a power-sharing agreement in terms of which the mayor is ceremonial and the executive represents the outcome of the poll on a proportional basis.
In Nelson Mandela Bay, the results are so fragmented that both the DA and ANC, with their 48 seats each, need the EFF and most other parties’ support to form a majority.
November 23 is the deadline for all municipal councils to be constituted, 14 business days after the 2021 local government election result was declared.
If councils are not constituted by the deadline, it opens the door for municipalities to be placed under provincial administration until a rerun of the elections.
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