Tshwane power shift: ActionSA poised for mayoral position, ANC gets speaker in deal to oust DA

ActionSA is set to get the mayoral position in Tshwane while the ANC will get the council speaker as part of a deal between the parties to take over the city.

Both parties are also prepared to offer the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) some members of the mayoral committee (MMC) positions in return for their support in ousting the Democratic Alliance (DA).

ANC Tshwane regional secretary George Matjila told the Mail & Guardian that ActionSA would get the mayoral position, but it was still not clear who Herman Mashaba’s party would field as its preferred candidate.

But other sources said the current deputy mayor, Nasiphi Moya, was ActionSA’s preferred candidate.

“The speaker will come from the ANC. The MMC position will be ActionSA, ANC and EFF but it will depend on what becomes the final arrangement with the smaller parties,” Matjila said.

Asked how the MMC positions would be shared, Matjila said “ I know, but I won’t give you [an answer] now.” 

The City of Tshwane is likely to have a new mayor and executive in about a week after the ANC tabled a motion of no confidence against the current DA mayor, Cilliers Brink. The motion will be supported by some of the DA’s current partners: ActionSA, the EFF, the African Christian Democratic Party and the Congress of the People. 

The motion was initially expected to be tabled on 30 August but was withdrawn by the ANC after Brink approached the Pretoria high court to challenge its legality, citing procedural irregularities.

Brink’s removal will signal the end of the relationship between the DA and ActionSA in the three Gauteng metros and an end to the multiparty government coalition. Part of the bickering in Tshwane stems from the DA’s failure to support a speaker candidate from ActionSA.

In a council sitting in March 2023 to elect ActionSA’s Kholofelo Morodi as speaker, DA councillors marked their ballot with 1, 2, 3 instead of ticking or crossing Morodi’s name, which resulted in the Electoral Commission of South Africa declaring them as spoiled votes.

This led to the African Transformation Movement (ATM) candidate Mncedi Ndzwanana, who was supported by the ANC, EFF and smaller parties, being elected as the speaker.

Brink has since labelled the divorce from ActionSA as deeply disappointing and “a betrayal of our coalition and of the residents of Tshwane”.

The ANC and ActionSA are already in a coalition in the City of Johannesburg, where they removed Kabelo Gwamanda as mayor and replaced him with the ANC’s Dada Morero. 

ActionSA has the speaker position in the metro and it was expected that the party would demand the same in Tshwane.

“The situation in Johannesburg and in Tshwane is far different. The ANC in Johannesburg has always been part of government so the issue was whether the ANC should be in the mayorship or not,” Matjila said.

“In Tshwane we have not been in government for eight years. The first leg is for us to be in government, so the ANC in Tshwane is not going to take mayorship but the reconfiguration is going to allow it to be part of the executive.”

The ANC believes that because it is the bigger party in government, it should be given the leadership role. 

Matjila said this was not the law but the view of the party, which was subject to others agreeing to that process.

“In Tshwane, because there’s a government now, our first step is to dismantle the government of the day. By dismantling the government of the day, we can not be ambitious. If we become too ambitious, it simply means those people may not agree.

“There’s a first step as it happened in Johannesburg. They never started by taking mayorship. They first became part of the government then later on, when the person who was at the helm was not equal to the task, there was a call for the ANC to take charge.”

ActionSA national chairperson Michael Beaumont told the M&G that the party was still internally reviewing its position in Tshwane and that review was not done with a premeditated outcome.

He said that although ActionSA was aware that there were proposals for it to take the mayoral team and participate in the removal of the current government in the city, the status quo remained until the party’s senate concluded the review and resolved otherwise.

He said the party’s deputy mayor had been doing “incredible” work in the city in the face of serious challenges, adding that other political parties viewing ActionSA as being able to lead the city was a “vote of confidence”.

“We see this as an opportunity. There is a great opportunity here to actually have a government that is led by a party that has a constituency on both sides of the proverbial railway tracks, so that service delivery is not the case that some have it and some don’t,” Beaumont said.

“The record of the current government in Tshwane has not been great in townships. We are going to be visiting a number of communities in the latter half of this week to directly inspect the state of service delivery on the ground.”

Asked whether the party would consider Moya as the new mayoral candidate, he said there had not been an official discussion about that, but added: “I do not think it would be a massive leap in logic that Dr Moya would be incredible for the role. She would be a very strong candidate and the party would be foolish not to consider her very seriously.” 

Beaumont said the response of the DA in accusing ActionSA of betrayal was “telling” and made it clear that the DA would not “play nice” with parties such as ActionSA, the Patriotic Alliance and the  Freedom Front Plus.

“The only parties the DA can work well with are parties seen not to be eating its lunch,” he said.

“We have an agreement which requires an ActionSA speaker to be elected but it didn’t happen because the DA spoiled their ballots and brought about the election of the ATM speaker. I must be clear that this is not about the positions. It aggravates the problem.

“What this is, it is about the real concern about service delivery in communities in Tshwane. We have been part of a coalition where people have died because of cholera, because of a city that is in denial about the water crisis that it has created in Hammanskraal.

“Mamelodi continues to have water on fewer days of the month that they don’t have water. We continue with the sewage crisis in Soshanguve, there is contaminated groundwater heading in the direction of Hammanskraal and the refuse collection in all these communities is an absolute disaster.”

An ActionSA source in Tshwane said the party was reviewing its state of engagement in Gauteng, which included Tshwane saying the party has every right to review its internal arrangement and position. 

The source said he could neither confirm nor refute the allegations that the mayor would come from ActionSA. 

“The discussions are still at provincial and national level, but we do not have that information now. The decision of who occupies which position in the organisation solely rests with our upper structures.”