Political parties hit snags in coalition talks

While ActionSA and the Democratic Alliance (DA) were still in discussions and keeping a “media blockout”, Gayton McKenzie’s Patriotic Alliance (PA) insists that the DA must give it four executive positions in the Gauteng metros or no deal.

After talks between the DA and PA deadlocked over its demands for two mayoral executive committee positions in Johannesburg and one each for Ekurhuleni and Tshwane, the DA turned to ActionSA with the hope of clinching
a coalition deal.

But the talks were difficult as the DA had to satisfy not just ActionSA and PA, but also the other smaller parties.

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The deadline to elect the members of the executive committee for Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni was Monday and Tuesday for Tshwane.

If the parties did not agree on a coalition and failed to constitute a government, the province may intervene and imposed an interim administrator to run the municipalities until there was an election re-run within 90 days.

PA’s national chair Marlon Daniels insisted they want nothing less than two executive positions in Johannesburg and one each for Tshwane.

“For now there is no deal,” said Daniels.

ActionSA lead negotiator John Moodey confirmed his party and the DA were in confidential talks.

Political analyst Prof Dirk Kotze was optimistic that a deal would be reached before the deadline. He said the pressure of deadline might force the parties to compromise.

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“My suspicion is that each party wants to get what it demands, in the normal tradition of negotiations this is what is called brinkmanship,” Kotze said.

Another analyst Ralph Mathekga said the way the talks happened should not be surprising.

“Political parties started from the end and tried to go to the beginning. They started to vote for council and now they are going to the negotiations which was bound to be difficult,” Mathekga said.

Neither the DA nor the ActionSA spokespersons were available for comment.

– ericn@citizen.co.za