ActionSA to put forward its own mayoral candidate to replace DA’s Phalatse

ActionSA, the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) coalition partner in the City of Johannesburg, says it will put forward its own mayoral candidate to replace Mayor Mpho Phalatse.

Joburg coalition talks

This comes as Phalatse, a DA member, faces a third attempt at removing her from office after three motions of no confidence were filed by minority parties – the African Transformation Movement (ATM), Al Jama-ah and the African Independent Congress (AIC) – last week.

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Motions of no confidence in Phalatse and council Speaker Colleen Makhubele – a member of the Congress of the People (Cope) – are expected to be tabled in council on Thursday should the programming committee approve them.

Voting on the motions, if approved, is likely to take place on Friday.

Fallout between DA and PA

The party would reach out to its other coalition partners and seek their support for an ActionSA mayoral candidate following a fallout between the Democratic Alliance and the Patriotic Alliance (PA), ActionSA national chairperson Michael Beaumont said on Thursday.

Phalatse’s future as Joburg mayor hangs in the balance once again after negotiations between the PA and the multi-party coalition led by the DA failed at the eleventh hour.

The multi-party coalition wanted the PA to rejoin the coalition after the party joined forces with the African National Congress (ANC) last September, but the DA refused.

This was because the coalition partners wanted the PA to get two positions in the mayoral committee in the portfolios of economic and infrastructure development.

RELATED: Coalition instability: ‘Phalatse remains vulnerable and can be ousted yet again’ – analyst

In rejecting the proposal, the DA branded the PA as “corrupt” and said it would not hand over the two lucrative portfolios to a party that is greedy and dishonest.

According to Beaumont, if the DA had accepted the deal, this would have restored the majority of the coalition in Joburg and defeated the motions of no confidence against Phalatse.

As a consequence, Beaumont said, it seemed certain that the motions of no confidence would succeed and the coalition in Johannesburg will fall.

“ActionSA will now reach out to our other coalition partners and seek their support for an ActionSA candidate to stand for mayor today [Thursday].

“We will do so because the failure of the DA to lead this multi-party coalition requires another political party to step forward to try and keep the ANC out,” he said in a statement.

‘DA must decide’

The DA should decide whether it would support an ActionSA candidate for mayor or whether they will vote for the ANC, Beaumont said.

“These can be the only choices for a party that has given up on leading in Johannesburg. The DA will have to account for its choice.

“While ActionSA cannot be assured of the election of our candidate, we will always work to provide an alternative to the failed ANC governance that was rejected by voters in 2021.”

Phalatse was abandoned by her own party despite her determined efforts to lead the coalition government, Beaumont added.

‘Patronage extraction’

Meanwhile, the DA on Thursday said it refused to allow the PA to join the multi-party coalition because the party had “patronage extraction as its goal”.

PA leader Gayton McKenzie repeatedly made it clear during coalition negotiations that his party had no interest in principled governance and existed “solely to leverage and abuse any power it obtains to extract corrupt rents,” the DA said.

“As a result, the current round of negotiations were characterised by the PA’s constant extortionist tactics, apparently designed to play the coalition off against the ANC to get a better deal for itself,” said DA national spokesperson Cilliers Brink in a statement.

The PA’s only interest was to either obtain control over the coffers in order to “rob Joburg blind” or to leverage its failure to obtain such control to get a better deal from the ANC, Brink claimed.

He also accused ActionSA of being complicit in the PA’s attempted extortion of the multi-party coalition.

“It will be disappointing to residents of Johannesburg that ActionSA was not only willing to hand over control of Joburg’s coffers to the PA, but [also[ that it sided with the PA rather than the DA when it became clear that McKenzie’s party was using the negotiations to extort the coalition.

“The DA painstakingly built this multiparty government to offer an alternative to ANC rule marked by zero-tolerance for corruption and dishonesty.

“We did not build it only to be extorted by the PA, aided by ActionSA, to surrender power over tenders and contracts to people who are every bit as corrupt and dishonest as the ANC.”

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