ANALYSIS | Anti-DA sentiment running high in ANC as SA goes to vote - News24

With the inevitability of more coalition negotiations on the horizon, Carol Paton takes the temperature in the ANC for more cooperation with the DA.

Anti-DA sentiment is running high in the ANC just as the country goes to the polls on Wednesday, and a new round of coalition talks is expected once the results are in.

About half of the country’s 257 municipalities are expected to be hung when the votes are counted, according to the Mapungubwe Coalition Barometer.

While the government of national unity (GNU), anchored by the ANC and DA, has been functioning without any disruptions since June last year, when the Budget was eventually passed on the third attempt, several changes in the environment since then have heightened anti-DA sentiment.

The first is the leadership change in the DA, which resulted in the exit of John Steenhuisen in April and Geordin Hill-Lewis and Ashor Sarupen becoming leader and federal chairperson, respectively.

The new leadership corps has made no secret that they think Steenhuisen was weak and no match for President Cyril Ramaphosa in advancing the DA’s positions. The leadership believes that the DA received a bad bargain in the negotiations to establish the GNU. While the signed statement of intent between the two committed to roughly proportional representation of the executive, in the end the DA got only six Cabinet posts while the ANC took 20.

The new leadership has taken a more assertive approach, with Hill-Lewis putting Ramaphosa on notice in its first days, demanding that the minister of social development at the time, Sisisi Tolashe, be fired after she was exposed in media reports for failing to declare gifts and for abusing the perks of office.

Whether due to this pressure or not, Tolashe was fired the day after Hill-Lewis publicly released his letter to Ramaphosa.

Ironically, in the ANC, the DA’s new assertiveness has been interpreted as a veer to the right, despite Hill-Lewis and Sarupen being known as members of the more liberal wing of the party. Said a political adviser to one of the most senior people in the Cabinet:

Indications from within the DA suggest it intends to drive a harder bargain in the coming negotiations, since it is expected to be the largest party in at least four metros and possibly seven.

A second factor affecting the environment and the relationship between the ANC and the DA was the DA’s decision to oppose the ANC’s appeal to the Constitutional Court to have its candidates, who had not been properly registered on the Electoral Commission of South Africa’s (IEC) database, declared legitimate.

READ | ANALYSIS: Mbalula gets a reprieve. But is the GNU on the chopping block?

On the doorstep of the court at the end of proceedings in the case, which the ANC won, ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula invoked the statement of intent, saying the DA’s decision to oppose the appeal contravened the statement of intent’s most basic principle of the commitment to the supremacy of the Constitution and the fundamental right of the people to vote.

“We must review the DA in the GNU… We must look for other partners. There is nothing that binds us to the DA forever.”

This was music to the ears of the hawks in the ANC, with both Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi and ANC Youth League president Collen Malatji immediately tweeting their support.

Lesufi has, on several occasions since, used public platforms to denigrate the DA’s role in government. On Sunday, he reminded journalists that the DA had refused to participate in intergovernmental forums when it briefly took charge of Gauteng’s metros in 2016.

Asked by TimesLive about his preference for coalitions in the local government elections last week, Lesufi recalled the DA’s court challenges to the National Health Insurance and the Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill.

“You don’t insult us during the day and want to work with us at night. It doesn’t work that way.”

A third factor affecting relations, though not new, is the DA’s demeanour, which the ANC interprets as arrogant. While this is not new and has been at the root of antagonism against the DA since it was formed in 2000, the leading role that Helen Zille will play in negotiations in Johannesburg, the biggest prize of the election, has already laid the ground for discord.

Said a senior leader this week: “I don’t think many people [in the ANC leadership] will easily go along with Zille. She is just so damn arrogant. I think many will say they will only go with the DA only if they bring a different mayor.”

From the ANC’s side, the experience – justified or not – of DA arrogance has made it difficult for its leadership to sell the GNU to its wider activist and membership base. Between February and May last year, the ANC leadership only just held off a rebellion in its ranks against the GNU after the DA’s stance on the Budget.

Had an ANC national executive committee (NEC) meeting been held in that period, the party would certainly have ended the GNU. It was only due to Ramaphosa and Mbalula, who jointly held off the demands that the NEC convene, that a collapse was avoided.

A fourth change in the environment, and one that will become more prominent in time, is the increasing likelihood that the ANC and its splinters realign. As the ANC faces losing its status as the largest and most important party in the country and risks falling into obscurity, the attraction of reunification is increasing.

For the EFF, which is not growing, and the MK Party, which will lose its raison d’etre when its leader, Jacob Zuma, is gone, the case for reunification – particularly if it brings access to state power – will also be attractive.

Amid the changing political environment, it is unclear who will lead the ANC’s coalition negotiations.

While Mbalula has asserted that talks for the metros will be led by the top seven officials, the top seven are deeply divided and were unable to determine the mayoral candidates for the metros and secondary cities, as had been planned by the ANC elections commission.

The decision was left in abeyance with the determination of mayoral candidates still not made. Some metros and cities still have as many as eight ANC mayoral candidates on their proportional representation lists.

The provinces and regions also successfully discarded the provisions that the commission had inserted into the candidate selection process, for instance, the one that obliged branches to hold community meetings to ensure that popular candidates came to the fore. When the final lists were revealed by the IEC several weeks after the parties’ submissions, 52 candidates who had been recommended either by communities or by the top seven were left off the ANC’s lists.

In terms of the ANC’s established ways of doing things, in the past, the ANC’s regional and provincial executives took the lead in negotiations and served as the locus of decision-making. This is what happened in the provincial coalition negotiations in 2024, which was the key reason the DA and ANC were unable to reach a settlement, and in the 2021 local government elections.

Given the Presidency’s close interest in the state of Johannesburg and its attempts to assist it through its presidential task team, President Cyril Ramaphosa is expected to seek to influence coalition discussions.

However, even within the ANC’s leadership ranks, there is no certainty he will succeed.

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