Joburg Crisis Alliance hosts summit to hear from political parties about their views of coalition politics

The Joburg Crisis Alliance is made up of citizens, academics, and individuals who came together to express their experiences of challenges in leadership and more that are hurting the city.

The alliance held a summit where political parties discussed the merits and pitfalls of coalition politics.

Four parties were invited, the ANC, DA, ActionSA and the EFF. The EFF did not respond to the request and ActionSA arrived almost two hours after proceedings began.

Read more: VOX POP: Community members speak on elections impact

Yunus Chamda, a former municipal manager, and local government expert opened proceedings. “There is still a deep love of the city. It is where we call home, where we get married and where we work. We are all here on a Saturday because we love this city and want to be a part of resolving some of the crisis that we are faced with.”

Ishmael Mkhabela, former president of AZAPO, social activist and community development practitioner led the discussions. “We owe politicians no love, but we do owe them recognition. We invited four parties to join us today. The DA and ANC are here but ActionSA is not. This is not respectful.”

The ANC was represented by Dada Morero, the DA by Belinda Echeozonjoku and ActionSA by Patricia Kopane.

The hours-long sessions are summarised below with the most important points listed below per party from the event.

Dr. Sithembile Mbete a lecturer in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Pretoria facilitated the first session. “Councils are supposed to serve communities as we live in a participatory democracy, but this is not the case in Johannesburg. Illustrating this is the fact that we have had four mayors since 2021.”

“The quality of our lives is dependent on the people running the city and there is no doubt we are in a crisis. Problems include erratic water supply, electricity outages, traffic lights that don’t work, problematic roads, streetlights that don’t work and are important for security and more. There is a very real sense of general deterioration of city infrastructure.”

“There is infighting in council and chaos around coalitions leaving residents in a state of panic and unease.”

How do the parties view the current crisis in the city?

(ActionSA was not in attendance for this segment)

ANC, Dada Morero

“It is important to note that Johannesburg has been one of the more stable municipalities traditionally. Things then took a turn in 2016, and the change of leadership impacted the services of the city. When we left office, the surplus was at about 5.5b. The city’s finances were in order, and we could save capital.”

He said the city is being affected by uncontrolled growth with informal settlements mushrooming like the one in Finetown that has thousands of shacks requiring services.

“Mushrooming of informal settlements, I think 320 exist now, definitely impacts infrastructure negatively and hampers our ability to provide services. Add to that all the illegal connections for water and electricity and it is tough.”

Morero says the city is losing as much as 40% of the water we have paid Rand Water for and as much as 29% of electricity produced is used via illegal connections and bridging of meters.

“There are problems in Johannesburg with infrastructure, revenue collection and unemployment which has increased meaning there are fewer people paying rates and taxes which sits at about 86%.

DA, Belinda Echeozonjoku

“I can identify with what is being highlighted in terms of city faults and collapse. I am a ward councillor, so residents call me all the time with never-ending problems.

“The city is in a crisis. One just needs to drive around to witness the dysfunction.”

She says since 2021 the inability of the ruling party (ANC) to accept that the residents have spoken and that there are challenges is astounding.

“We tried in 2021 to create a working coalition when Dr Phalatse was mayor – we wanted to improve what we found and some of those plans were started. There was a huge infrastructure backlog already then. We soon realised that there was not enough money for the city to function properly and this was mostly because of corruption because we could not find all the money.”

She says there was also a lack of budgeting for infrastructure and maintenance.

“People in the city who had the experience and expertise were bullied out and so they left with their skills to work elsewhere. When Dr. Phalatse was voted out, much of the progress made was swept aside.”

Why are coalitions so unstable?

Also read: ANC odd one out when it comes to coalitions

ANC

• We must be honest. We are in a coalition as the ANC and it has not worked well as it is not as stable as we would have wanted.
• We have different interests and needs etc meaning we find ourselves not being a unified and cohesive government.
• I believe there is a lack of understanding of what government should do, and why government is there. Some parties saw an opportunity to gain access to state resources. I see this daily, and it looks as if we are after the purse of government.
• The biggest issue Johannesburg was billing.
• The party with the largest number of seats should be the leader in any coalition but unfortunately, the law says you can’t adjust things mid-term. Therefore, all proposals can only be implemented in 2026 whether it is at a local or national level.
• As for the DA wanting to dissolve the council – this would need a by-election. This is not practical considering we are almost at the time for the national polls. It is not feasible.
• I think it might be possible after the elections, but we will need to see what other parties think.

DA

• We have recently introduced a bill to put a threshold of 1% of votes received for parties to be able to hold positions. We do not believe that in 2021 when residents spoke and said they do not want the party that has created the problems to be in control. We knew the ANC would not be able to assist in fixing the problems they caused. That is why the DA formed coalitions.
• When these negotiations took place, we saw that many people just wanted positions and were not interested in serving the people. There are 18 political parties in the council, and we spoke with 10.
• A portion of the bill we are working on deals with the time allowed to negotiate coalitions. Currently, it is only a few days but in other successful countries with coalitions, it is weeks if not months to hammer out the details, like in Germany.
• Negotiations should be based on shared principles and values of having the citizens as the focus.
• This is why we want the council to be dissolved so we can let the citizens speak again.
• We’ve tabled a motion for the dissolution of the council. The constant changing of mayors does not work and we believe residents should be allowed another opportunity at an election.
• It is not possible now to work together with the ANC as they do not even engage with us on issues that are affecting residents. We need to work with everyone like I do in my ward where not all residents are DA, but I am their councillor, regardless.
• If we can’t even talk at a grassroots level, it cannot happen higher up. Until the ANC that runs government understands it is all of us who need to be serviced, we are in trouble.
• IDP sessions have been good and we are hearing what communities want.

  

ActionSA, Patricia Kopane

• We do not believe in the dissolution of the council but support a multiparty charter. Everyone needs to put their egos aside and work together for the good of the residents of the city.
• We also don’t support putting the city into administration as it would give the ANC control and we would not have access to information and processes like we do now.

  

The Joburg Crisis Alliance wrote to the president offering suggestions on how to overcome hurdles in the city, but no response was received.-

Related article: Defend Our Democracy holds Gauteng roadshow to enlist election observers