ActionSA insists DA is behind collapse of Mpho Phalatse-led Joburg coalition

ActionSA national chairperson Michael Beaumont is adamant the DA must carry the blame for “handing Johannesburg to the ANC”.

This as the ping pong blame game continues among political parties that delivered the DA’s Mpho Phalatse the Joburg mayoral chains.

The fallout follows the voting out of Phalatse last week and her being replaced by Al-Jamah’s Thapelo Amad.

The DA told the Sunday Times last weekend the blame lay at the door of the Patriotic Alliance (PA) and ActionSA for Phalatse’s ousting.

According to the DA, the PA’s demands for two mayoral committee positions to vote in favour of Phalatse were unreasonable. It accused ActionSA of plotting to seize power for its own mayor working with the IFP and Freedom Front Plus, among others, while “driving a wedge” between the blue party and its deployee Phalatse.

Beaumont fired back, saying it is the DA’s hardline negotiation approach that has effectively handed power to the ANC, the believed puppet masters of the incumbent Joburg mayor.

He said the DA could not wish away the reality that the PA were the kingmakers in Joburg, who should be accommodated at all costs to keep out the ANC and the EFF.

“The DA decided that as far as their ‘values’ were concerned, the cost of sustaining the coalition was too much, yet the far worse outcome of passing the cost of an ANC coalition in Joburg and an EFF coalition in Ekurhuleni onto the residents of these two cities clearly presented no such moral challenge,” said Beaumont.

“On the other hand ActionSA, along with the IFP, ACDP, FF Plus and UIM, adopted a very different point of view. It goes without saying we all would have preferred if the seats needed to sustain the coalition in Joburg lay with a party or parties that made coalition decisions based on shared principles and not specific positions.

“Regrettably the electoral outcomes reflect the will of the voters, and placed the PA as the kingmakers.”

Beaumont said they were baffled that the DA was so “determined to allow the ANC and EFF back into power” that it even rejected ActionSA’s offer “to surrender two of our three MMC positions to the PA when the DA would not compromise”.

If the DA persists with the negotiation tactics it displayed in Joburg, which led to the removal of Phalatse, said Beaumont, the hopes of dethroning the ANC at national and provincial polls next year may prove a pipe dream.  

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