Zille favours ActionSA or ANC coalition in Joburg - TimesLIVE

Democratic Alliance Johannesburg mayoral candidate Helen Zille says her preferred coalition options in the city are ActionSA or the ANC, arguing that a two-party government would be easier to manage than a broad coalition involving several smaller parties.

In an interview with TimesLIVE, Zille said preliminary election results suggested the DA could form a two-party coalition with either ActionSA or the ANC, although she cautioned that the final outcome would depend on the results and negotiations.

“I have been looking at the numbers. Before the final results are in, we could do a coalition with two parties in a two-party coalition with ActionSA or ANC,” she said.

Zille said she favoured coalitions that were “as big as necessary but as small as possible”, arguing that governing with fewer partners would reduce the complications associated with managing competing political interests.

“When you put together a coalition, it is as big as necessary but as small as possible, because there is [a difference between] managing two parties in a coalition and seven parties in a coalition. I’ve been in a seven-party coalition. It wasn’t easy, but we managed to get through it,” she said.

She warned that smaller parties in coalition governments often prioritised positions for their associates and access to tenders over improving service delivery and governance.

“The trouble is when you have all sorts of smaller parties, they’re normally in it for how many jobs they can get for their mates in key positions, how many tenders they get to determine and whether or not government improves, they don’t mind,” Zille said.

She argued that the DA had a greater electoral incentive to improve governance because its performance in government directly affected its prospects at the ballot box.

However, Zille said she did not want to pre-empt the DA’s national coalition negotiators, who would ultimately determine which arrangement offered the party the best deal.

“I don’t want to start tying our national negotiators. They will see what best deal they can get and I don’t want to second-guess them. They will ask my advice in the end,” she said.

If asked for her recommendation, she would favour a two-party arrangement over a coalition involving as many as 10 parties, unless smaller parties collectively offered another viable route to a governing majority.

Zille said having multiple coalition options placed the DA in a stronger negotiating position, contrasting this with the party’s position during negotiations for the national government of national unity.

“The most important thing to do in coalition negotiations is to have options. That gives you your power. Our weakness when negotiating the GNU was that we had only one option to do a deal with the ANC,” she said.

She said the DA had entered the GNU to prevent an ANC-led coalition with the EFF and MK party.

Zille also expressed uncertainty about whether ActionSA and the ANC could secure a governing majority together, even with the support of smaller parties.

On concerns that a DA-led administration could withdraw social grants, Zille dismissed the suggestion as “lunatic, hard and cruel”, insisting that social assistance remained essential in a country grappling with high unemployment.

“I was the mayor of Cape Town and premier of the Western Cape and no one lost their social grants. Why would I take away social grants in Joburg,” she asked.

Zille said the DA wanted to create the conditions for more people to enter employment by attracting investment and stimulating economic growth, rather than removing support from those who depended on it.

“Social grants are essential in our country with so many people unemployed. It is crazy to think we would take away social grants,” she said.

She argued that the country’s long-term objective should be to move more people from dependence on social assistance into employment and a growing middle class.

“We would rather have 29-million registered taxpayers than 29-million people on social grants. That would make a completely different country. We would make a massive transition to a middle-class, prosperous society and that is our goal,” she said.