ActionSA's Michael Beaumont says the unstable coalition arrangement in Gauteng metros will benefit the ANC at the 2024 national polls.
According to the party's national chair, the partnership led by the DA in three metros is likely to leave voters feeling disheartened that coalitions don't work nationally or provincially.
“The only beneficiary of coalitions falling apart is the ANC because people watching the political alternative will feel demoralised and potentially not vote. And some who considered voting away from the ANC may look at all this mess and say, ‘Better the devil I know’, which is a huge problem,” Beaumont told TimesLIVE.
“Another dimension is that you know what happens when the ANC is in power, you know how the procurement situations in those municipalities are turned around to fund the political activities of the party. This is a party that until recently couldn’t pay its wage bills and if people think the taking of these metros is not a little about that they are wrong.”
Beaumont’s comments come as the DA-led coalition collapsed in Johannesburg, leading to an overnight ANC takeover that involved the EFF and Patriotic Alliance (PA). The city's DA mayor Mpho Phalatse was this week reinstated by the South Gauteng High Court in what is said will be a short-lived victory, as the ANC alliance still has the numbers to retake the metro.
The DA-led coalition fell apart after the party refused to further share power with its coalition partners, saying there was a coalition agreement in place that could not be perpetually amended. This saw the EFF and PA jumping ship and joining the ANC.
Beaumont warned that failure by coalition partners to get their acts together will be punished by voters in 2024.
“Other parties that have behaved badly in coalitions are going to feel the pinch, because what we are witnessing is voters being brutal with political parties regarding how they behave in a coalition.
“These guys [DA] will learn the hard way that if they continue to operate in this manner and run coalitions into the ground, they are going to pay the ultimate price. I think [that's going to be] the main driver of good behaviour of some parties.”
According to Beaumont, the DA’s sudden unwillingness to co-operate with the coalition could have been influenced by a realisation that ActionSA is likely to snatch many of its voters in 2024.
He said it is evident the DA views ActionSA as its competitor, which explains the spats between the two. The parties have publicly fought each other instead of engaging in private coalition meetings since the DA refused to further share power with its Johannesburg partners.
On realising the ANC was making inroads with the EFF and PA, ActionSA suggested the DA give the IFP the speaker position, while the PA wanted a second MMC position. However, the DA refused.
The party also accused ActionSA of trying to bring the EFF — with which it vowed never to work — into the coalition via the back door.
“For the DA, any success for ActionSA is negative. Let's take Johannesburg as a microcosm — while it’s true we took a lot of votes from the ANC, we also did from the DA. The DA had 104 councillors in 2016 and in 2021 they were down to 71. They are being cut by a third, quite literally. And I think the DA is looking at an election where those losses were limited to only six provinces in which we contested and they are imagining what those will look like across nine.
“[You don't spend the amount of time the DA does attacking] a party that’s not a threat. No-one is attacking COPE right now and, let’s be honest, no-one is worried about COPE. [They have] voters who are saying, ‘You know, I’m actually not sure if I’m happy with the direction the DA is going and I wanted the DP [Democratic Party] to grow up into the DA and not go back to the DP again]’.
“So I think there’s a huge level of insecurity on the DA's part and I think it has become a major driving force in their approach towards coalitions with us. I think their approach towards coalitions is to frustrate ActionSA’s agenda. That’s certainly what we are concerned about and that’s our lived experience in the coalition.”
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