Coalition. What coalition?

Responding to media reports about the parties’ coalition plans, EFF leader Julius Malema said his party was not in talks with any other political party about coalitions.

“These reports must be dismissed as mere desperate speculations in an attempt to defocus the EFF’s objective of taking government, particularly in Gauteng,” he said.

“There are no talks of a coalition with anyone because the EFF has only one objective in these elections, and that is to win.”

He said the DA represented everything the EFF opposed in the “fundamental direction of South Africa’s economy”.

“Whoever is speaking to them on behalf of the EFF has no organisational mandate and will in due course be found wanting.”

DA leader Helen Zille said her party would not enter into a coalition with Malema’s party “under any circumstances”.

A coalition with the EFF would be unworkable because of ideological differences between the parties, she said.

“I have always made it quite clear that we will only form coalitions where it is possible to form a coherent government and implement our policy commitments to the public,” she said in a statement.

“This would be impossible with the EFF.”

Meanwhile, DA Gauteng premier candidate Mmusi Maimane also dismissed claims of a coalition with the EFF during the DA’s march for jobs in Joburg.

Speaking to reporters after the march, Maimane said, “A vote for the EFF is a vote for the ANC… There’s really no difference between the leader of the EFF and the leader of the ANC.”

“What we don’t want is much of the same.”