The City of Johannesburg’s coalition government is no more.
On Friday, Dr Mpho Phalatse received her marching orders. In a dramatic turn of events, the DA decided not to agree to one positional change to ensure that Phalatse could retain her position as executive mayor.
The coalition as a political agreement now teeters on the brink of collapse. Friday’s successful vote of no confidence in Phalatse has now given the Metro to the ANC that promised a return to “glory days”, a phrase that can be interpreted in a hundred sarcastic ways.
South Africa’s backroom politics is greater than its public pronouncements.
From the Zuma family and RET attempts to seize control of the ANC, to the CR 2024 brigades desperate to secure a second term for Cyril Ramaphosa and to the DA’s “Cape Town strategy” which focuses on building business and civic majorities over time that cannot be challenged, the backrooms are filled with advisers aiming to give their party the best possible outcomes in 2024.
The ANC has been dumbed down to a clumsy mixture of party agents who are blinded by personal loyalties and who are without a national and global vision for a just and prosperous democracy.
The December 2022 Elective Conference will no doubt give us more of the geriatric class, all standing in line for “their turn to lead” instead of giving South Africa a young, bold, visionary leadership cohort with a disdain for factionalism and corruption.
The DA’s backroom is somewhat different. Young leaders are emerging, of which Geordin Hill-Lewis, Lindiwe Mazibuko and Mbali Ntuli were all students of that youth class, but the class captain holds an iron fist control over it.
Long after you’ve graduated from the class, she will mark you “failed” if you as much as show a sign of independent thought that draws interesting attention to yourself.
What emerges is a class of robotic agents who are not allowed to shape their world outside of the lessons they have been taught. The list of those marked “failed” by the class captain is growing. You never graduate from that class, no matter your seniority.
So what is the current political climate South Africans are living in? It is one where all of our politics are driven by party interest, not constitutional outcomes. Everything is now part of the Trumpian strategy, which is: campaign, campaign and campaign.
That is the lens the Johannesburg coalition collapse should be viewed through. The ANC leadership has turned one of Africa’s largest cities into a dreadful mess. Voters booted out the ANC and a coalition government, led by the DA, took over.
However, the next election is in less than 24 months, which is too short a time to turn things around in the big city.
The DA does not want to go into an election with an unfixed Johannesburg and have the ANC pointing fingers at them for the mess Johannesburg is in. They would rather win its provincial government for a full five-year term and set up to win the city outright for the next five-year municipal term.
A second, probable strategy, is to draw as much business revenue to Cape Town, marketing it as the new economic hub of Southern Africa, a city with a reliable business infrastructure, which it has in plentiful supply.
Both the ANC and DA are plotting their 2024 strategies. Growing the tax base is pivotal to increasing the power base.
Thus far the ANC is losing at the strategy game. It simply is incapable of lifting its geriatric head to see the future. It is still shuffling its feet, singing Struggle songs, while the DA is building a city as a citadel for business.
The DA should, however, check on the “failed” report cards given to some of its best leaders. Something is wrong in the exam room.
* Lorenzo A Davids.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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