South African ratepayers are in despair as mayoral musical chairs and coalition dramas have led to chaotic governance in many a metro. In this interview with BizNews, Marius Roodt of the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) says it is time for governance in the metros to be taken seriously. He dissects the removal of the Democratic Alliance’s Cilliers Brink as Mayor of Tshwane, as well as ActionSA’s working arrangement with the African National Congress in Joburg. However, he also explains why stability in city governance is not dependent on Government of National Unity agreements being binding on lower levels of governments. “I don’t think it’s all that healthy for the DA and ANC to sort of become some kind of mega party which has big majorities across the country.” Meanwhile, Roodt shares some of the recommendations the IRR is currently developing for the stabilisation of municipal government.
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Extended transcript of the interview ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Chris Steyn (00:02.494)
There is governance mayhem in many of the country’s metros. We speak to Marius Roodt of the Institute of Race Relations. Welcome Marius.
Marius Roodt (00:13.646)
Hello Chris, thanks for having me.
Chris Steyn (00:17.0)
May we go to the ousting of Democratic Alliance Mayor Cilliers Brink in Tshwane that is still making headlines. And what do you have to say about that?
Marius Roodt (00:26.328)
Well, it seems that there’s no real reason to get rid of Cilliers Brink. Of course, there’s been a lot of talk about how the municipality hasn’t been run properly and the issues with service delivery. But I mean, if you look at what the Auditor General recently said, Tshwane had the best improvements in audit results and so on. A lot of people will tell you that, you know, that’s not enough, that, you know, service delivery is much more than just being able to collect money. But if you don’t have stable financials and if you don’t have money you can’t do any service delivery.
And I think it also the fact that there’s now infighting between this new coalition of ActionSA and the ANC about who’s going to be appointed the new mayor. ActionSA wants their candidate to be the mayor. ANC looks like they’re pretty keen on appointing Kgosi Maepa who’s an advisor to Panyaza Lesufi as the Mayor of Tshwane. So it just shows also that there was no plan by this anti-DA coalition Tshwane for what was going to happen afterwards. It’s all well and good wanting to get rid of Cilliers Brink, you know, nobody’s saying that parties weren’t allowed to vote against Cilliers Brink for whatever reason. That’s part of democracy. But it’s quite telling that ActionSA, the EFF and ANC didn’t have a plan for what’s going to happen. Cilliers Brink has now been voted out as mayor, but what’s the plan? They’ve got two weeks now to vote for a new mayor. So, and who knows? I mean, things, South African politics has been pretty weird since May this year; so maybe Cillirs Brink could actually make a comeback. I don’t think we probably shouldn’t rule that out either.
Chris Steyn (02:00.212)
Well, what do you think of the working arrangement entered into between ActionSA and the African National Congress in Joburg?
Marius Roodt (02:08.142)
Well, I think that actually makes a bit more sense. Joburg, the governance has also been quite unstable. And I think it was fair for ActionSA to say to the ANC, we’ll support you in Joburg. They weren’t getting rid of a mayor who seemed to be doing a pretty good job. It was about stabilisaing governance in the city. And ActionSA also said a condition of supporting the ANC would be to get rid of Kabelo Gwamanda , the mayor from Al Jama-ah. And I think the point about Kabelo Gwamanda, I think that also shows how lots of political parties don’t really take governance of our, especially our big metros, very seriously. You know, I obviously don’t know Mr. Gwamanda personally, but he didn’t seem to be a particularly capable individual. And I don’t think anybody who voted for him in the Johannesburg City Council to become mayor thought he was the type of person that would be able to turn around the or fix the very serious problems that faces Johannesburg. You know, he’s from quite a small party and I think we need to start taking governance in our municipalities, especially our metros, more seriously. People, capable people need to become mayors of these places. The ANC has done it before. We’ve had people like Park Tau who, you know, maybe I don’t agree with him politically, but he seemed like a fairly competent person when he was Mayor of Johannesburg. And there’s, I mean, there’s also questions about somebody like Dada Morero, who’s the current mayor of Johannesburg, but I think….yeah, just the fact that somebody like Kabelo Gwamanda was elected as mayor and before him, Thapelo Ahmad. As I say, I don’t think anybody in the ANC or the EFF who did vote for him actually believed that this was the right person to fix a place like Johannesburg, which faces, you know, anybody who lives in Joburg knows that it faces some very serious problems. And it’s very important for a place like Johannesburg to work. It’s a bigger city. It’s, I think alone, it’s still, it provides 15% of South Africa’s GDP. So it’s vital that a place like Johannesburg works and you’re not going to be able to do it if you’re appointing or voting for people who are clearly not up to the task as mayor and if you’re constantly changing who is in charge of the city and also not just mayor but people who are on the mayoral committee and so on.
Chris Steyn (04:22.27)
How strong is the Government of National Unity really if it cannot let that filter down to the provinces and the municipalities, if it doesn’t seem to have a power to do so?
Marius Roodt (04:35.054)
Look, I might have a different view from quite a lot of people with this, but I think it’s fairly healthy actually for the GNU to have different arrangements from what’s maybe at the provinces and at local government level. I think it’s fine for the and the ANC to work together at national level and still oppose each other in, say, in Gauteng or Tshwane or Johannesburg or whatever the case is.
And you know what, it’s probably actually better for democracy to still have the DA as opponent an to the ANC in municipalities or other way around. I don’t think it’s all that healthy for the DA and ANC to sort of become some kind of mega party which has big majorities across the country.
And in a place like Germany, is also, it’s a very federal place. So in Germany, it’s very common for coalitions to govern in Germany. But for example now in the governing coalition in Germany is the Social Democrats plus the Free Democrats plus the Green Party. But in the various states in Germany, those parties are opponents in those legislatures. For example, you’ll get the Social Democrats being in coalition with the Christian Democrats and opposition will be the Free Democrats and the Greens, for example. Or the Greens will be governing with the Christian Democrats and the Free Democrats will then be in opposition in one of the cases. So I really don’t think there’s a problem for the DA and the ANC to be governing together at national level and to still be opponents in Gauteng and in the various municipalities.
Also, would we say now that in places where the DA is in coalition with, say, the Freedom Front Plus and the ACDP, they have to bring in the ANC, for example? I don’t know if that would be good for governance or for those municipalities. So, obviously, I think this, I don’t really think this is a problem for the GNU yet. It’s something to keep an eye on. But as I say, I think it’s actually much more healthy for the GNU agreements to not necessarily be binding on lower levels of government or lower level of governments rather.
Chris Steyn (06:34.74)
Well, but unfortunately for the ratepayers, these coalition battles have caused a great deal of governance instability and that does affect service delivery, which at the end of the day is the bottom line for the voters. So I understand that you at IRR are is busy developing a set of recommendations to stabilize governance in metros. Can you please share that with us? you how far are you with that?
Marius Roodt (07:04.312)
Yeah, we’re kind of workshopping some dears around, but it basically comes down to stabilising coalitions. So there’s quite a few things you can do. I mean, as you know, in South Africa, there’s a very short time to form a coalition after an election. There’s only two weeks. And in other countries, they take much longer. I mean, there’s always the example of Belgium that’s spoken about where it took 500 days for new government to be formed. Even in, I just mentioned Germany now, I think it took two months for their last coalition to be formed.
So I think in South Africa we need to look at extending the period that’s allowed for coalitions to be formed. Two weeks I mean, it’s pretty much a miracle that managed to get a GNU formed in the two weeks that we did have especially in a place like South Africa with such with parties with such different views and outlooks and so on. So, there’s something that I think we need to look at extending the time that allows for government to be formed. I think maybe a satisfactory period would be maybe something like two months or 60 days or something.
It would also probably be useful to make coalition agreements publicly available to people to see what they say and what the kind of method to enforce consensus and so on would be.
There’s also…maybe we should look at forming something like a Coalition Ombudsman and have an office in the Ombudsman where when parties are disagreeing that are in coalitions, they can go to mediation and so on.
And we should also maybe look at having some form of binding agreements. This is maybe a bit more tricky because obviously if you go vote for a mayor and then turns out that he’s actually a massive fraudster or he killed a puppy or something, you don’t want to be stuck in a binding agreement with somebody like that. So there’d have to be some ways that you could escape a binding agreement, but I think those would be also quite useful. I don’t think a binding agreement for the full term of the legislature would be a good idea, but something maybe for say two years or something, or we could take it on a case by case basis.
So there’s different ways that I think we do need to stabilise municipalities.
Another one, something else we can look at is deciding how much responsibility a municipality should have. We do know that lots of municipalities in Africa, especially rural municipalities, suffer from lack of resources and a lack of expertise.
Marius Roodt (09:29.078)
And we need to ask ourselves, should those municipalities have the same kind of powers that, you know, fairly well-resourced place like our metros have or, you know, smaller cities like, you know, Rustenberg or Nelspruit, places that are fairly prosperous, you know, and are pretty big and have resources, have quite a few ratepayers and so on. We need to think about does a place that’s very small and maybe doesn’t have the kind of expertise that’s needed to have a municipality have the same kind of powers to run the place as I say, like a bigger municipality. that’s also something we need to look at.
And there’s also, it happens quite commonly abroad where various sub-national divisions don’t necessarily all have the same powers or responsibilities. It all depends on what kind of expertise and capabilities they have. And then they obviously get given more responsibility if they can show that they have the expertise and can resource themselves.
Chris Steyn (10:28.148)
So when you’re done with your recommendations, who will you be presenting those to?
Marius Roodt (10:32.814)
Well, we’d like to take it to the Minister of Corporate Governance and Traditional Affairs, but we’ll obviously be trying to spread them around as much as possible and get as many people to read them as we can, get some kind of pressure on the people who actually run the country.
Chris Steyn (10:53.844)
Well, meanwhile, Marius, many voters say they feel completely gaslit because they voted for one party, but their voters actually ended up in another party. And that is across the board. So people say, vote counts, but not in the way that I wanted it to count. So I don’t know, what do you say to the voters? Because many feel truly disappointed and betrayed.
Marius Roodt (11:19.022)
But look, I mean, all you can say is if you are upset with who you voted for this time, you got to vote for somebody else next time. But that’s, this is also a problem in South Africa, that is declining voter turnouts. In the 2021 local government election, only about 45 or 46% of registered voters turned out. And if you look at total eligible voters, that’s everybody over the age of 18 is a South African citizen, only 30% of people voted in the last local government election. And in Tshwane and Johannesburg was a, same sort of situation in Joburg. Only 42% of registered voters turned out in 2021. Tshwane was only 45%.
So, and people say, you know, your voice isn’t heard and so on, but you know, even the ANC actually listens to voters. I like to think of the 2016 local government elections in Nelson Mandela Bay, where the ANC saw there’s quite a good chance that they’re going to lose to the DA. So they made their mayoral candidate Danny Jordaan. And there’s lots you can say about Danny Jordaan, but Danny Jordaan did have experience of running a big complex organisation. You know, he played a big role in the 2010 World Cup, which is one of the biggest achievements of post-Apartheid South Africa, I think. Also, lots you can say about that, but I think overall was good for the country. So they didn’t go put normally what the ANC does, just put some random deployed cadre, you know, and then people go vote for it. They put somebody like Danny Jordaan, who, as I say, there’s lots you can say about him, but he does have experience in running complex, big organisations, made him their mayoral candidate. Of course, he didn’t become mayor of Nelson Mandela Bay and he didn’t spend too much time on the opposition benches in that city. But I think even the ANC can see when they need to put somebody; if they have a chance of losing an election, then they will put somebody who’s fairly capable in charge. That’s not always the case, obviously. I mean we saw what happened now in Joburg and Nelson Mandela Bay where the ANC has supported these candidates from very small parties. But I think the ANC, as I say, even can listen to the voters.
So what people must do, you need to go out and vote. I mean, if only 40% of people are voting, I mean, that’s 60% of registered voters, and I’m not even talking about eligible voters. So that’s what people need to go do. And it’s also about lobbying people you voted for. I think you can email your political party that you voted for, express your unhappiness, and what have you. And I think we’ve seen that.
Marius Roodt (13:44.104)
That’s going to happen with ActionSA, I think. That’s going to happen with ActionSA, I think, if you just look on social media, I think they for what they’ve done recently, I think they’re in big trouble. And yeah, they….I mean, I’d be very surprised if they get anywhere close to the support they got in the 2021 local government elections.
Chris Steyn (13:59.353)
Well, I think this upcoming municipal election will be very, very interesting, especially with MK positioning itself to contest in as many municipalities as possible and not the only party wanting to do that. It’s very early to begin to look at forecasts, but you’re obviously already thinking about how that may play out. What do you think?
Marius Roodt (14:22.712)
Yeah, I mean, obviously it’s still two years from now and it’s going to be…I think MK is obviously very interesting. A lot can happen. I think it depends on whether they can build any structures and how much of the, I mean, obviously they’re a mix of, some people tell you that’s not a Zulu ethnic vote, but definitely is partly. And it’s also support for Jacob Zuma. I mean, but they did recently win a by-election in Northwest. So I think that was the, only the third ward they’ve won in South Africa, the other two were in KwaZulu-Natal. But that all said, in by-elections across the country, they’ve only really stood in KwaZulu-Natal and in a couple of other places; as I said they won in the North West. I think they’ve done fairly poorly. They’ll be, I think, a bit disappointed with how they’ve done. And in local government elections, turnout’s always a bit lower. And MK is definitely a grievance-based party. And this latest 2024 election was a bit different because in general, parties which are based on grievance don’t really get their voters to come out in big numbers. EFF is a good example of that. So MK, they kind of bucked that trend in the national election, but we’ll have to see if they can get the voters to come out in the local government elections in 2026. And also depends if they can build structures and so on. From what it seems, they do seem pretty chaotic. I mean, you guys have had what’s his name, Jabulani Khumalo on your show and to talk about how chaotic MK is and how it’s actually run by a former president’s daughter and so on. So I think a lot depends whether they can build structures and what somebody like Floyd Shivambo. can do. From what I can see at the moment, I don’t think they really, I mean, I’m quite skeptical of what they’re gonna do, but I didn’t think they would get 15% in the local government election and nearly, I mean, sorry, the national election and nearly win KwaZulu-Natal.
And I think the GNU is also going to, how the GNU does over the next couple of years will also, I think, influence DA and ANC voters. If it does poorly, I think you’ll see others stay away by their voters or maybe look to other parties. But if it does well, that could boost them in local government elections. There’s obviously local government elections are quite different from national elections and people do vote for different reasons. But there’s obviously some influence between national national elections and local elections.
Marius Roodt (16:45.57)
So it’s definitely something to watch. And yeah, I mean, obviously you don’t want to predict anything, but I think one thing you can say for sure is we’re going to see even more coalitions after the next local government election. I think at the moment about a third of South African municipalities are governed by coalitions. I think we’re going to see even more of that after 2026.
Chris Steyn (17:05.716)
Well, here in the Western Cape, we’ve also seen the Vryheids Front Plus turning against the DA quite unexpectedly. What has been the biggest trend that you have seen in by-elections since the national election?
Marius Roodt (17:24.302)
It’s a bit hard to say with trends because often, so I mean there was a whole bunch of by-elections recently and the DA did very well in all of them. But they were all wards where the DA had done pretty well in 2021, you know – and a lot of them where the DA did well there was very low turnouts, like kind of 10 to 20 percent turnout. So it’s, you have to look at the kind of thing realistically from 2021. And I think what you can tell from 2021, where we have seen the ANC done poorly, which was reflected in 2024. And the PA has done quite well in lot of parts of the country and it’s taken votes away from the ANC and the DA. But that said with the ANC, it’s a vote share in rural South Africa, since 2021 and since 2024. In general, it holds up remarkably well in lots of parts of the country, especially Limpopo, parts of Mpumalanga, rural Eastern Cape. The ANC is still getting, you know, even up to 90% of the votes sometimes. Of course, now and again, there’ll be these places where they get a bit of a shock. So MK winning that ward in Northwest, I think was in Madibeng. Can’t quite remember. So overall, think the, I mean, the trend that you’ve been seeing is that the ANC is on the decline outside of rural South Africa, but its votes is holding up remarkably well in rural South Africa. But I think that’s what’s what we’ve seen in elections. And the PA is kind of taking chunks out of the ANC and the DA.
So yeah, but I think I think a lot is going to also depend now on how the GNU performs and we’ll have to see what happens and also will voters now blame Action SA or the DA or the ANC for what’s happening in places like Tshwane and Johannesburg and so on. So that also all remains to be seen. It’s yeah, it’s it’s I mean as the Chinese curse goes, you live in interesting times.
Chris Steyn (19:21.236)
Thank you. That was Marius Roodt of the Institute of Race Relations speaking to BizNews about governance mayhem in many of the country’s metros. And I am Chris Steyn. Thank you, Marius.
Marius Roodt (19:34.286)
Thanks, Chris.
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