RIGHT OF REPLY | Tom Eaton misses the point so well, you’d swear it was on purpose

Tom Eaton’s recent piece "Morero is the ANC, the ANC is Morero", criticising ActionSA for its abstention in the motion of no confidence against Johannesburg mayor Dada Morero, spectacularly misses every discernible point as if it was his intention to do so.

Earlier this week, ActionSA communicated its decision to abstain from the DA’s motion of no confidence in Morero for two important reasons:

• First, because Morero’s record is indefensible and therefore ActionSA could not support him.
• Second, because the DA failed to articulate a viable governing alternative, making its motion little more than a gimmick to obscure the truth that Johannesburg is governed by the ANC as a result of the DA collapsing efforts to restore its own Mpho Phalatse.

It is worth noting Eaton’s selective approach to facts, particularly his failure to acknowledge that in taking this position, ActionSA lost its speaker in Johannesburg and did so willingly on principle. If ActionSA were spineless or cowardly, it would have voted in a way that preserved the speaker’s position.

Had Eaton taken the time to read and understand the next sentence, he would have noted that the ANC in Tshwane and the ANC in Ekurhuleni have proven to be far more effective, more consultative and more constructive in government.

One wonders whether Eaton would have shown the same courage as our speaker and her political staff, who, upon being briefed of their impending removal, remained resolute that ActionSA must never must never bend the knee for positions.

On the most salient points of Wednesday’s council meeting, which exposed the failure of the two largest parties in the Johannesburg council, the ANC and the DA, Eaton had nothing meaningful to contribute. Instead, he chose to focus on an offhand remark I made in distinguishing between the ANC and Dada Morero.

Had Eaton taken the time to read and understand the next sentence, he would have noted that the ANC in Tshwane and the ANC in Ekurhuleni have proven to be far more effective, more consultative and more constructive in government.

ActionSA has been vocal on the failures of ANC governance, including declining the invitation to take up a seat in the GNU because of its likely continuation of ANC inertia. Our credentials in this regard is well established, especially when contrasted with those parties that rushed from the opposition benches into the back seats of blue-light convoys.

What seems to escape Eaton is a rather simple point. Motions of no confidence in a mayor should be assessed on the specific merits or failings of that particular municipality’s performance, not on broader and unrelated political considerations.

Eaton calls this “mental gymnastics”. I suppose what some people view as intellectually demanding, others simply recognise as common sense.

• Michael Beaumont is the ActionSA national chairperson

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