In the early morning hours of Thursday last week, the speaker of the City of Johannesburg metropolitan municipality, Vasco da Gama, of the DA, was voted out through a motion of no confidence. The motion was tabled by the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) and was supported by other minority parties, as well as the ANC and the EFF.
Some of the DA’s own coalition members, from the IFP and ACDP, also voted for the ousting of Da Gama. It is believed that the motion is a precursor to the removal of Dr Mpho Phalatse, the city’s executive mayor.
On the surface, the removal of Da Gama and Phalatse is about principle. Opposition parties as well as some within the DA-led coalition have argued that the former speaker had consistently failed to be impartial in his chairing of council meetings and has favoured the DA in his decisions.
With regard to the mayor, it has been argued that she has a criminal case pending in relation to a multi-million rand payment to some foundation. Both the reasons advanced against Da Gama
and Phalatse, if they have basis in fact, are valid enough to necessitate their removal. But the question must be asked: are these the real reason the two are being removed?
It is my contention that the removal of the DA-led coalition is not about the principle of accountability or transparency. It is not even about the state of service delivery in the metro, which is deteriorating due to reasons both internal and external, including the cost of living crisis precipitated by the Russo-Ukrainian war that has devastated global economies and exacerbated food insecurity in Africa. Rather, it is a contest for state power. More than this, it is a demonstration of the frailties of SA politics, which lack the maturity to sustain stable coalition governments.
While coalition governments in SA are not a new phenomenon, it was in the 2016 local government elections that they redefined the country’s political future. Whereas in the past coalitions happened at local government level, usually in small municipalities, in 2016, they happened in the metros – with half the metros being led by coalitions.
Significantly, they were DA-led, with only the City of Ekurhuleni being ANC-led. This radical transformation of the country’s party political system, from one party domination to multi-party governments, was defining. But before the end of the 2016-2021 political term, all but one coalition government had collapsed. Curiously, it was the ANC-led City of Ekurhuleni that maintained a stable coalition, while the DA-led City of Johannesburg, City of Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay disintegrated spectacularly. With the ongoing instability in recently constituted coalition governments in the metros, it appears that the problems of the previous term’s collapsed coalitions will recur.
The collapse of coalitions brings about instability and affects the delivery of basic services. In his book titled Future Realities of Coalitions in South Africa, former Ekurhuleni mayor Mzwandile Masina reflects on the economic and social costs of the collapse of coalitions in Nelson Mandela Bay and the Gauteng metros.
He illustrates how the failure of councils to adopt budgets, which often occurs in coalition governments, leads to the withdrawal of critical funds by the National Treasury as well as the delay in service provision for communities. The reality is that while they will be with us for the foreseeable future, coalitions are going to continue to be unstable and to collapse. Unlike countries such as Germany, which are led by coalitions, SA political parties lack the maturity and integrity to manage stable coalitions. And communities are going to pay a heavy price for it.
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