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The “soft coup d’état” that saw the ANC lose control of key municipalities to the opposition in the recent municipal elections has sent the party on a listening and reconciliation drive this weekend in bid to prevent future electoral losses.
At the post-elections national executive committee meeting soon after the elections, ANC leaders received marching orders to go out and fix concerns that communities had with the party throughout the country.
Activities included removing ANC councillor candidates that had been forced onto communities and lobbying those who had left the ANC to stand as independent candidates to return to the fold.
ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe told City Press that the party would seek to persuade “anyone” to work with them, but “relationships and dynamics at local level will dictate how the ANC relates to people who had left to become independent candidates and whether or not it was possible to bring them back on board”.
On imposed councillor candidates, Mantashe said the ANC’s processes would be strict and disputes that were “artificial” – where factions wanted their own people at all costs – would be booted out. Only genuine issues would be entertained, he said.
Cosatu president Sdumo Dlamini said the worst has happened for the ANC after the municipal elections, given the level of unhappiness on the ground over the imposition of councillors.
After campaigning for a win, Dlamini said it was a sad situation watching municipalities leave the ANC’s grip in what he described as “soft coup d’état”, whereby coalition governments have been formed to the disadvantage of the ANC in some of the 27 municipalities.
Dlamini said in some instances, by-elections would have to be held as part of the ANC’s mission to self-correct. Discussions would also include independent candidates, he said. “If independents continue to be unhappy, it will erode base of ANC. They sabotage from within and it is most fatal. The ANC leadership and alliance will engage those independents to find a way of reconciling.”
City Press understands that, in some instances, the ANC was able to come to an understanding with councillors installed despite being rejected by voters, that they would step aside after the elections.
SA Communist Party (SACP) second deputy general secretary Solly Mapaila said the party had called on the ANC to engage with independents differently. “The ANC is worried about its unity and should reach out to rebuild the movement,” said Mapaila. He said that in some cases, factional division within the ANC pushed members to transgress ANC processes by campaigning against the party.
The ANC has adopted a similar reconciliatory tone in Mogale City in Gauteng, where it lost control of the council to the DA and other opposition parties. ANC West Rand regional secretary Sanele Ngweventsha said the party would be closely monitoring whether or not smaller parties were still happy with the coalition arrangement with the hope of “finding new friends”.
“You never know what is going happen. Maybe we could get one of two friends that might be willing to work with us going forward. If their programme is not really achieving what they thought, maybe they will feel like trying the ANC, you never know,” said Ngweventsha.
He said the ANC had also rejected plans to challenge and overturn the outcomes of last week’s inaugural sitting, and that they were ready to work together with the DA.
The twists and turns in last week’s inaugural sitting in Mogale City produced one of the most surprising outcomes of multiparty governments after the recent municipal elections, with the ANC winning the speaker and chief whip posts while the DA won the mayoral seat – effectively forcing both parties to work together despite their proclaimed different approaches to government policy.
Disgruntled ANC councillors have described the arrangement as a “forced coalition”. They had objected to “the level of intimidation” during the council sitting.
Ngweventsha said “the venue where the meeting was held, the public was not separated from the councillors like in a sitting of a council. So that alone showed the level of intimidation to the councillors”. But, he said, the ANC had decided to “leave it”.
Similarly, the DA in Rustenburg said this week that it was optimistic a high court would overturn the outcomes of the municipality’s election of candidates for speaker and mayor on the grounds of irregularities. But, these efforts would be expensive and pointless because the numbers were likely to still favour the ANC.
The disputes that had been raised included that the presiding officer on the day should have allowed the municipal manager to chair the sitting, and that in the event of tie after voting, proceedings should have, according to the law, been postponed for seven days instead of a rerun.
