Tomorrow, the 20th of November, the people of Klawer go to the ballot in a rather peculiar byelection. The candidate for the DA is the former ANC councillor for the same ward - Jan Koopman.

This sort of crossing over is not unprecedented, but is fairly unusual. The ANC, as it turns out, is happy to be rid of Koopman, though that might just be a bit of face-saving, who knows. The striking bit of context for this is that not two months ago, the DA were caught in a scandal after allegedly attempting to bribe an ANC councillor to stand down in Swellendam.

The council is split, with the Vryheid Front Plus holding the single seat which allows the DA to govern. Winning this ward could give the DA a clear majority. This is considered a big deal for the DA, as it is an opportunity to eject the Vryheidsfront Plus from the coalition governing the municipality. All the bigwigs flew down or up from wherever they were posted, to come and support a man whom even the ANC regarded as a bit of a deadweight, and who has a rather mediocre reputation in an already fairly seedy municipality.

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Party of excellence

The municipality, like most in South Africa, is at least gently crooked. Generally we expect the DA to have higher standards (and of course, they do, compared with a dismal creature such as the ANC), but as I have learned from covering these matters, the DA has extraordinary capacity for keeping their members from being held accountable.

The DA’s deputy mayor in Matzikama, Amelia Job, has been facing fraud charges after allegedly lying about her father's death in order to write off his personal debts to the municipality. She was also caught giving her son Heinrich Koopman a job as an official (I couldn't confirm if Jan and Heinrich were related, it may be a coincidence).

Anton Bredel’s inquiry, a gigantic document running to over 100 pages, of almost entirely repetitive drivel, came to the following conclusion:

While […] the selection panel was aware of this relationship, [and while] the Municipality failed to comply with the Recruitment and Selection Policy during Mr Koopman’s appointment, as well as the allegation by former Councillor Loff that he was pressured by Councillor Job to score Mr Koopman highly[, b]ased on the available evidence, we found it insufficient to make a finding, on a balance of probabilities, that nepotism was involved.

That’s not even a coverup, that’s just a cover letter on a rotten report. There are recommendations to follow disciplinary proceedings, and to fire Heinrich Koopman, but the negation of the nepotism charge clearly protects Ms Job's job.

Other issues, like the R100 million-plus Eskom debt, may be partially blamed on the ANC which took over the municipality between 2019 and 2021. But the DA-led coalition still has no plans for paying it off.

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Swellendam a precedent for Matzikama

But this odd little campaign, involving floor-crossing from the ANC to the DA, is not isolated. The DA have poached ANC members before. But in this case, I strongly suspect it is part of a broader strategy of the DA to get rid of the VF+, a little war they declared a few months ago after falling out in Oudtshoorn.

Just shy of two months ago in Swellendam, the Mayor (DA) was implicated in an alleged attempt to bribe an ANC councillor to stand down, including several other enticements, such as a place at Paarl Boys high for his kids, and a large sum of money (R2 million). It is also alleged that Jaco Londt, the party’s provincial chairperson, was involved.

The VF+ hold the speaker’s position in that municipality, and the DA have been attempting to remove him since he voted for an investigation into the corruption allegations against the mayor. Personal friends of the mayor subsequently took to social media to smear speaker van Schalkwyk with a series of unsubstantiated accusations of racist comments.

The DA are now pursuing a motion of no confidence against him.

This isn’t the party’s first acrimonious clash with van Schalkwyk. Usually the chairmanship of its Municipal Public Accounts Committee (MPAC) is held by a party in opposition, in order to hold the local government to account. van Schalkwyk held this post before entering the DA coalition, and to uphold this principle, he handed the position to the ANC’s Julian Matthysen. van Schalkwyk voted against the DA, his coalition partners, on this question.

“As Speaker I have an additional responsibility over executive oversight and the MPAC is a  section 79 Committee of Council and is usually chaired by the opposition. Rightfully so, as how can the governing party objectively oversee itself? That risks a conflict of interest and always leaves doubt over the objectivity of such an important Committee focused on oversight relating to the annual financial statements, budget and performance management, and unauthorised, irregular and or fruitless and wasteful expenditure etc.”

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War on the VF+

This year, the DA’s  has been on a campaign to remove the VF+ from every municipality in the province, chosing in some cases to align with small communist parties rather than face the difficulty of governing under the scrutiny of the dry and unexciting, but generally clean and upright conservative VF+.

This campaign began after a dispute in Oudtshoorn, where the previous governing coalition, composed of the DA, VF+, ICOSA, and local party Saamstaan, was collapsed when the DA walked out of the joint caucus. A motion of no confidence had passed against corruption-accused DA Mayor Chris McPherson, and the DA had offered no replacement candidate.

In response, the DA threatened to kick the party out of all coalitions in the province, where endemic corruption has been protected by the DA for decades.

Following this collapse, the VF+ took the initiative, and invited all parties to new discussions over a “government of local unity”. The new Government of Local Unity has installed Johan Allers of the FF Plus as the new mayor. The FF Plus extended an invitation to the DA to join the GLU from the beginning, but after shunning the olive branch, they have been shut out of government.

The main complaint here was that McPherson was shutting out the DA’s official coalition partners from local decisions, and instead directly working with the ANC. He also unlawfully barred the Speaker (VF+) from working committees, and often unilaterally reversed decisions reached in council.

Similar disruption occurred in Theewaterskloof, though the removal of the DA mayor there has been reversed, on the basis that the vote of no confidence was placed on the agenda with less than 24 hours notice, and that the Manager of Corporate Services who called the extraordinary council meeting had no authority to do so.

Here, the case against the DA is not so clear, and until Tienie Zimmerman gets back to me, the only record in public is the DA’s. The VF+ has failed to defend their position in public, while the DA has sent written statements to every news outlet. Effectively their claim is that the VF+ are just assisting the ANC in looting disaster funds (though they sent Tertius Simmers to make this statement, a man facing accusations of exploiting his ministerial housing allowance).

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‍Parthian shot

Perhaps the best word of caution to the DA on matters of floor-crossing would be their golden boy in Nelson Mandela Bay, Nqaba Bhanga. Bhanga was their main man when they took over the municipality, but saw massive looting under his tenure, largely by ANC cadres in the civil service, through manipulation of evergreen contracts in the legal office. After being removed from government, Bhanga’s restlessness eventually led him to publicly accuse Helen Zille of racism and ditch the DA for the ANC.

Even when the man remains loyal to the party, they can often be a headache - Memory Booysen, after being poached by the DA in 2010, made headaches for them not six months into his tenure in Bitou in 2011, and the DA have been dealing with the fallout from the corruption and coverups for over a decade, finally promoting him to parliament to get him out of the way.

This is not how to do government if you give a damn about outcomes for the people on the ground.