Desperation or strategy? ActionSA aligns with ANC faction

ActionSA’s tie-up with the Panyaza Lesufi Gauteng ANC faction is a desperate attempt at relevance by a shrunken party.

It will backfire.

In the 2021 local elections, ActionSA attracted a healthy 296 345 votes in Johannesburg. That 16.05% translated to 44 out of 270 council seats. Herman Mashaba’s party did not win any wards. Not one.

In this year’s national and provincial elections, ActionSA plummeted to 1.2% countrywide, attaining only six out of 400 national assembly seats. In Johannesburg, the party scored 88 013 votes (6.22%), shedding a massive 208 332 compared with 2021.

The 6.22% achieved in 2024 would translate to 17 council seats if these were local elections. A wipeout.

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Although ActionSA’s support has shrunk, its representation in Joburg Council remains 44 until the 2026 local elections. ActionSA’s “senate” has decided the best use of these seats is to align with Lesufi’s ANC, who have been looting and ruining Gauteng metros.

The Gauteng ANC dropped to 34.75% of the provincial vote this year, compared with 50.19% in 2019. The drama where Lesufi allocated eight of 11 provincial Cabinet positions to the ANC was aimed mainly at protecting the Alex mafia.

Unfairness was a by-product.

Not only do the Gauteng ANC want to keep tenders, contracts and other levers of patronage to themselves. They also want to limit the opportunities for DA corruption-busting.

Lesufi is at odds with ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa. In parliament last week, he adopted an aggressive, finger-thrusting pose, ordering Ramaphosa to sign the Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill. It’s on YouTube.

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This was another challenge to Ramaphosa’s leadership – just as his decisions on who should be in the Gauteng provincial Cabinet contradict the tenor of the government of national unity.

Such are ActionSA’s new friends, an anti-Ramaphosa ANC faction. Of all the parties who previously campaigned against the ANC, ActionSA was most strident. And now?

Consider the different roles of the legislature and executive.

ActionSA says it will not assume executive posts in Joburg. It will have no members of the executive committee (MMCs). Instead, it “will take up a number of positions in the legislature so that we have the platform to hold any new government to account”.

It wants the speaker position.

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The cliché about holding people “to account” is almost meaningless. Mostly it involves asking questions and pointing fingers. If ActionSA were genuinely to hold the executive to account, it would unravel the still prevalent ANC corruption which Mashaba complained about when he was mayor.

How could that work? At Monday’s media briefing, Mashaba said they wanted to “stabilise” Gauteng metros by being a constructive opposition.

I put it to you that if they were to hold ANC executives ruthlessly to account, without fear or favour, the effect would not be stabilising. Quite the opposite. It should make the local ANC tremble.

A “constructive” ActionSA couldn’t afford to do that, for fear of being dumped by a radical ANC faction.

This arrangement will not save Joburg from ruin. With no ward councillors or MMCs to do anything constructive, ActionSA will be tainted by cosy association with a corrupt ANC faction.

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It will shrink further in the 2026 local elections, becoming more irrelevant.