‘The ANC hasn’t really understood it lost power’ − Zille

DA federal council chairperson Helen Zille said the ANC hasn’t really understood it lost power in the country.

Negotiations between the ANC and the DA on the division of powers in Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi’s executive broke down once again on Tuesday.

This leaves Gauteng as the only province without an executive.

Losing power

Zille told 702 the ANC must accept that it lost power.

“My reading of it is that they want to stay in power, but they need to be propped up in power, and they don’t want to fulfil the statement of intent that we signed on the 14^th of June, which basically says that we have to share power proportionally to the electoral outcome as well as to try and be inclusive.”

Zille claims the ANC doesn’t was to play “open cards”.

“They have not played open cards with us at all. They have offered us three seats in a 10-member Cabinet that is excluding the premier.”

“The ANC sits there and offers and tells people what the ANC thinks everyone should get. We have a different approach, we say we are now partners in a government of national unity. We’ve signed a statement of intent and yes the ANC is slightly the bigger party, and I just have to tell the voters of Gauteng that if they hadn’t split the vote over all smaller opposition parties, the DA would be the biggest party in Gauteng,” said Zille.

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‘ANC factions’

Zille claims there are factions within the national leadership of the ANC.

“The national leadership was there at the meeting yesterday. My counterpart, Fikile Mbalula, was there and you can see the tensions between various factions, of course its very, very obvious.

“They brought a delegation of about 10 people if I’m counting correctly. We had three while they had a very large number of members I presume to cover all the factions they have to please. But that is not our problem, it is their problem. They must understand that they tried to pull the wool over our eyes and we saw through it,” Zille said.

GNU ‘bumpy ride’

Zille said the GNU is going to have a very “bumpy ride.”

“It’s going to be very bumpy; the ANC has never had to share power. The ANC has never actually had to read, study, mark, learn and imminently digest documents they signed.

“We take those documents very seriously. There’s a principle attached to them and we are saying you must respect a document that your national leaders signed and don’t just say ‘of course we accept that and try and push it off the table’ and then force upon us an agreement that demonstrates that you haven’t read it, or if you have read it, you don’t intend to respect its clauses,” said Zille.

Meanwhile, ANC secretary-general is expected to address the media on Wednesday after the ANC and DA failed to reach an agreement.

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