Illustrative image | David Makhura. (Photo: Gallo Images / Papi Morake) | Fikile Mbalula. (Photo: Gallo Images / Luba Lesolle) | Cilliers Brink. (Photo: Gallo Images / Beeld /Deaan Vivier) | Panyaza Lesufi. (Photo: Gallo Images / Sharon Seretlo) | Helen Zille. (Photo: Gallo Images / ER Lombard) 
ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula has told Daily Maverick that the party will respond only next week to an ultimatum from the DA to help vote Cilliers Brink back in as Tshwane mayor.
“We are in discussions now,” said Mbalula as pressure grew to reinstall the mayor on his capital city perch or face no-confidence motions in three other cities.
After the May election, the ANC is in a different political universe and an era of unstable metropolitan coalitions. The party could face motions of no confidence in the cities of Ekurhuleni, Johannesburg and eThekwini, where it governs as a coalition leader, and in the province of Gauteng, where it leads a minority government, and risks further sidelining the DA in Nelson Mandela Bay.
When Brink was voted out in a motion of no confidence tabled months ago by the ANC and supported on 26 September by ActionSA, the DA Federal Council Chairperson, Helen Zille, wrote an excoriating letter to Mbalula and the ANC’s head of coalition strategy, David Makhura.
She said that negotiations for a “stability pact” in cities, where both the ANC and DA are hurting as service delivery plummets, were off, and she called Brink’s ousting “seismic” for the Government of National Unity (GNU), which turns 100 days old this month.
Zille wrote: “The purpose of this letter is to make it clear that yesterday’s events in Tshwane signal the end of the progress we are making, countrywide, in our discussions on various models of cooperation in hung metros. The DA and ANC leadership in several of these metros (Ekurhuleni, Nelson Mandela Bay and eThekwini) have been involved, with our encouragement, in exploratory talks about various options for cooperation between us in these councils.”
She revealed that Mbalula and Makhura had blue-ticked her messages and muted calls, damaging the trust they had built in 100 days. Zille said the return of Brink was “non-negotiable”.
Four candidates are running for Tshwane mayor.
The administrative capital may be down on its luck with a massive budget deficit and poor service delivery, but its mayoralty remains a plum job.
As the graphic shows, the council is hung, so the coalition negotiations are complex. Here are the four candidates.
Candidate 1: DA – Cilliers Brink
Brink is fighting hard to get his job back. The 37-year-old was a DA Tshwane councillor from 2011, served as an MMC under DA mayor Solly Msimanga and knows the city inside out. He was elected mayor in April 2023 — and ejected just over a year later, leaving little time to make a demonstrable impact on a struggling city.
The ANC’s national leadership may see the value of mirroring the national GNU at the provincial and local levels. Still, it is constrained by a coalition framework drawn up by Makhura. This says that the party must take the mayoral chains in any deal where it has the most seats (as it does in Tshwane).
Candidates 2 and 3: ANC – Kgoši Maepa and George Matjila
Two ANC candidates (and perhaps more) want the role. The first is Kgoši Maepa, Premier Panyaza Lesufi’s chief of staff and a former ANC power broker in Tshwane. He has been the regional chairperson and worked with Kgosientsho Ramokgopa when he was mayor. It was not a salubrious term for the now-energetic electricity minister, but Maepa is well-regarded.
The ANC region has to submit three possible mayoral candidates to its provincial and national offices, who will then decide.
One could be the party’s Tshwane boss, George Matjila. The region is fiery and always wants its own local leaders. It bucks against the ANC imposing what it regards as outsiders. When the ANC tried to parachute in Thoko Didiza as a mayor, the streets erupted until the head office backed off. The ANC at Luthuli House is in a similar situation now.
A senior ANC official, speaking off the record, said the party’s National Working Committee believed that “with what we have in the Tshwane caucus, there isn’t anybody who can move that municipality forward. There’s a sober discussion in the ANC — the city owes Eskom R6-billion. It’s almost R20-billion in the red. You can’t give it to just anyone. The city has been badly run. It’s in a deplorable state.”
Read more: Trouble with a capital T – Jacaranda City municipality is wilting under bad finances and scandal
Candidate 4: ActionSA – Dr Nasiphi Moya
ActionSA withdrew support from the DA coalition and facilitated Brink’s ousting because it believed that Deputy Mayor Dr Nasiphi Moya would get the role.
“[She] would be the best choice from our point of view,” said ActionSA chairperson Michael Beaumont.
Moya is the most qualified candidate. She is a former chief of staff to a Tshwane mayor and has a PhD in Political Science and an MA in Philosophy. She and Brink made a dynamic pair. However, the ANC wants to stick to its coalition framework and choose a mayor because it is the largest party in the council.
Beaumont and ActionSA feel cheated.
“There are many examples where the ANC does not follow that framework. The ANC must choose between sitting in opposition [in Tshwane] for two more years or be part of government. Residents of this city have had governments of the ANC and DA and it hasn’t gone well — it’s possible to have a third way.
“What I can say is this: the ANC would need to remember if they do not have ActionSA on board they will not have a majority. It’s much more difficult to be a minority government at local level [than at provincial level],” said Beaumont.
In other words, if the ANC goes alone without ActionSA, it will face a gummed-up council where resolutions get blocked by gerrymandering and further instability.
The city has 14 working days from September 26 to form a government and elect a mayor. DM