A certain national political figure I cannot name told me shortly after the election that the DA intended to extend their coalition with the ANC down to the municipal level.

This would seem outrageous, but it isn't nearly as outrageous as a DA-ANC national coalition, and we got that just a week after Zille took Sunday World to the Press Ombudsman for claiming they were planning to do it.

Now, evidence for this is little more than a rumour, though I have heard it from a number of people placed within shouting distance of the cabinet, and it seems the DA’s intention is to form a permanent twin-party state out of the hybrid woke globalist compromise between the DA’s progressive liberalism and the ANC’s gradualist libertine African-National-Socialism.

Zille, if her podcast appearances are any guide, believes she (or rather her party, after she is gone) will be able to govern a permanent compromise between the DA and ANC in terms of policy, but with them steering the main decisionmaking.

This flies in the face of all evidence so far, in which they have demonstrated a complete lack of will and skill to challenge the ANC on anything substantive. They are loving it up there, and see no reason to antagonise the ANC on anything that would contradict the broad policy aims of the United Nations.

And from all my corruption coverage on this paper so far, it seems to me the DA has no desire whatsoever to hold its own members accountable for any form of corruption or misbehaviour, and in fact routinely promotes its most corrupt members caught in major scandals.

The extension of the GNU to the local level will only mean a locking-in of a deeply corrupt, left-wing status quo, and the utter elimination of any form of democratic accountability through the parliamentary system.

So at a national level, we have come to assume status quo will continue. What is this coalition going to look like at the local level?

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The war on the VF+

Recently, the DA has declared war on the VF+ across the Western Cape, kicking them out of every coalition they could afford to, and allegedly using brazen and illegal means to do so in others.

The trigger for this spat was an attempt to get a vote of no-confidence to remove the DA mayor in Oudtshoorn, where he had been conspiring with the ANC to exclude the DA’s official coalition partners from key decisions, as well as certain allegations of impropriety over a R3.1 million sewer pipe contract.

Recent tactics in the DA-VF+ civil war get particularly seedy. In Swellendam, the Mayor and the Provincial Minister for Social Development Jaco Londt allegedly bribed an ANC councillor to stand down. Of course, it seems like they picked literally the only honest ANC councillor in the country, capable of staring R2 million in the face and not blinking.

Then in Matzikama, they managed to persuade (careful speculating!) another ANC councillor to step down and cross over to the DA, triggering a by-election in which he stood in his old seat.

At present, this doesn’t prove much, except that the DA don’t like being held to account, or disagreed with. But the persistent theme in many of these places from VF+ candidates, is that the DA is more willing to work with the ANC than with their own coalition partners - they just can’t quite sell that idea to their base just yet.

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Tshwane

The next major indicator that the rumours of a DA/ANC local government coalition may be true was the DA’s attempt to stab their Tshwane coalition partners in the back to give the ANC a minority government in Ekurhuleni in exchange for the opportunity to govern Tshwane alone as a minority, exchanging what are called “confidence and supply” deals.

As a result, Mashaba has slightly lost his grip on reality, and on decency, and completely turned on white people.

The real reason the plan failed has to do with the Lesufi/Mashatile faction wishing to undermine Ramaphosa, and gunning ultimately for a national-level ANC-reunion coalition (ANC/MK/EFF in some combo).

So now the purple city is getting a second round of bruises.

Oh, well.

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Knysna

The most interesting story (at least as far as strange local tactics go) is in Knysna, where the DA has threatened to place the municipality under administration several times over the last two years, and even made a few actually steps in April, but have never completely followed through.

For a nice comprehensive list of reasons why the ANC/PA/EFF coalition need to be removed, you can read this over at the IRR. It’s not good.

But the DA, despite their bluster, have dragged their feet on the dissolution of the council.

The DA’s former hatchetmen in the district Esme Edge/Jefferies and Julie Seton/Lopes (their last names have changed a number of times over the years), have become impatient, and have attempted to turn to the courts under the aegis of their activist outfit The Accountability Group (TAG), to force through the plan to dissolve the council.

The personal motivations of this crowd are complicated, but some having switched over to ActionSA, they are no longer worried about friendly relations with the DA. Nevertheless, one would suppose that wanting to dissolve the council is what the DA want, no?

Well actually, the DA have asked TAG to stop, apparently because their legal strategy sucks and they want one that’s likely to succeed.

This isn’t quite the case. As Anton Bredell (DA MEC for Local Government) himself explained in Provincial Parliament on Thursday, his notice of intention was made in terms of S139(1)(a) of the Constitution, which states:

(1)When a municipality cannot or does not fulfil an executive obligation in terms of the Constitution or legislation, the relevant provincial executive may intervene by taking any appropriate steps to ensure fulfilment of that obligation, including—

    (a) issuing a directive to the Municipal Council, describing the extent of the failure to fulfil  its obligations and stating any steps required to meet its obligations;

But the TAG launched their legal case on the basis of S139(7):

(7) If a provincial executive cannot or does not or does not adequately exercise the powers or perform the functions referred to in subsection (4) [providing a budget] or (5) [providing basic services], the national executive must intervene in terms of subsection (4) or (5) in the stead of the relevant provincial executive.

What they're arguing is essentially that the Provincial Executive has failed to fix the problems in Kysna, and so they're entitled to have the council dissovled . That would be extremely embarrassing for the DA. If their case is successful, they will also be handing control of Knysna to National rather than Provincial government, thus making the DA take the reputation hit for failing to act, and handing a win to ASA affiliates.

Bredell regards this approach as “flawed” and “inappropriate”, and expressed worry that it would fail, and insisted also that they have chosen to help the council, and to take on an oversight role in the local municipality instead of dissolving the council, because they were worried that unless they helped the ANC’s “coalition of corruption” first, they would be in trouble for jumping the gun.

Bredell:

“This notice was intended to afford the […] municipal Council the opportunity to [respond. F]ollowing the S139(1) intervention notice and the [municipality’s response] I considered [the context and the risks] posed to both the environment and the community. [I proposed] that the Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning and the Department of Local Government provide assistance to the municipality in drafting a Consolidated  executive obligation monitoring and enforcement framework plan to mitigate the [municipality’s failures]. The municipal Council was advised that should it adopt the […] plan, no intervention would be recommended to the provincial executive, and the provincial government would instead closely monitor implementation[. H]owever in the event that the municipality refused [or failed] to implement such I would then proceed to [placing it under administration].”

This sounds imminently reasonable (if a bit dry and repetitive in the original), but then Bredell admitted that they were still not being cooperative in delivering payments to contractors, which clearly opens the way for TAG’s argument.

Now, TAG are not exactly known for being the most professional or reasonable organisation, and have a reputation for chasing personal vendettas, but the fact that the DA have decided to go soft on the ANC, and offer them so much latitude in the way of saving face, is certainly interesting.

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So what is to be done?

I suppose this all depends on your risk assessment. Certainly this isn’t a huge amount to go off of. But let us assume it is true - there are two outcomes here.

First, the ANC (who are rapidly rising in the polls) win in 2029 again. They jettison the DA, and go on their merry way. Nothing changes, everything gets worse.

Second, the DA/ANC persist through 2029. Nothing changes, everything gets worse.

In the mean time, the two biggest national parties completely remove all others from all municipalities outside of KZN, where a few opposition-coalitions will linger.

What’s the difference? Well, not much for local government.

If the DA and ANC really become cosy, as many big names have warned around the time of the elections (RW Johnson, Frans Cronje, Koos Malan, etc etc), then nobody has any ability to express their political will at all. The entire political class is insulated from the public, totally untouchable.

If, however, the Cape can destabilise the twin-party monopoly, and force the DA to bargain with the fringe, something may happen. Maybe they might even take one of their promises seriously.

The only solution is to create an opposition to the right of the DA, that can destabilise their monopoly on the Western Cape, and force them to fight with the ANC. At a local level, any victory is good, because as messy as coalitions are, provided they maintain the partisan bias against the ANC, good governance in possible, and we don't get another Knysna.

Unfortunately there is little to work with. The VF+, while the cleanest and most trustworthy party, is small, and is dealing with a leader who is firmly attached to his cabinet post despite the clear strategic incentives to leave the GNU. Can't sell yourself as opposition if you aren't in opposition.

The Coloured identity parties are split six ways from Sunday, and the Cape independence movement can’t work together on a united plan either, split between three parties and six organisations.

Local businesses are sick of the DA’s anti-business policies and practices, but aren’t politically organised. Coloureds struggle with having black people prioritised over them in housing grants, but can do little without competent representation.

Most municipalities in the Cape have their own local parties, but these are hardly coordinating with each other.

Unless all these fragments somehow get their acts together by the end of next year, it’s curtains for all opposition.

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