Action SA’s potential alliance with the ANC to unseat Cilliers Brink (DA) in Tshwane has shocked many. Brink’s leadership has initiated a courageous recovery plan, reversing the ANC’s previous mismanagement. If Action SA collaborates with the ANC, it could lead to a return to corruption and decline in the capital. Herman Mashaba’s apparent shift, motivated by political grievances, risks jeopardizing the city’s hard-earned progress. This decision will be critical for Tshwane’s future.
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By RW Johnson
The news that Action SA may join the ANC in evicting Cilliers Brink (DA) and his team from running Tshwane comes as a shock. ___STEADY_PAYWALL___ Brink has been leading a very determined, indeed courageous recovery plan in the nation’s capital which had been run into the ground when under ANC control. Already considerable improvements in service delivery and maintenance are visible and there is no doubt that Brink is leading the city back into functionality. Any decent citizen, irrespective of party, is bound to wish Brink all success. The appalling state of Jo’burg just to the south is a perfect example of the ruination wrought by ANC municipal rule and no can wish that for Tshwane. It has to be faced that the ANC is destroying urban society in South Africa. The only city in a healthy state is Cape Town – though Tshwane/Pretoria could still be saved.
Herman Mashaba, the leader of Action SA, has always vowed that he would never work with the ANC but his party’s dismal election result (1.19% of the vote, 6 MPs) seems to have shaken him. This new policy, if that’s what it is, seems motivated mainly by revengeful feelings against the DA for having so rapidly abandoned its “Moonshot” alliance to join the GNU. In effect he believes John Steenhuisen double-crossed him. But revenge seldom makes for good politics and one can feel sympathy for some of the undeniably decent people in Action SA who will feel appalled by Mashaba’s U-turn as it affects Tshwane.
Mashaba is, of course, one of the ever-expanding group of ex-DA leaders who have gone into politics on their own account. This group seems to have a great attraction for the media – Lindiwe Mazibuko and Mmusi Maimane are both frequent columnists and now that poor Ghaleb Cachalia has been forced out of the DA, he too has become a columnist. Patricia de Lille also sometimes appears in print. The pattern is the same for almost all of them: the DA decided to play identity politics and unwisely offered these black politicians senior jobs although they were quite inexperienced. Mashaba was handed the mayoralty of Jo’burg with no political experience at all. Even more unwisely, the jewel in the DA’s crown, Cape Town, was handed to Patricia de Lille who had given plentiful evidence of her dislike for the DA. Both Maimane and Mazibuko were given leadership roles very soon after they entered Parliament. It ruined both their careers.
These were all colossal mistakes and the DA paid a high price for them. Together with the absurd attempt to hand the DA leadership to Mamphela Ramphele – a party she refused even to join – it brought the party’s hitherto steady progress to a full stop. (It had grown at every election until 2014 but it has never exceeded the 22.2% it got then.) The exit of Cachalia was a ludicrous disaster. It was a considerable coup that this distinguished man from an ANC family should have joined the DA. To get rid of him because of his attitude to a war in a far-off foreign country – an issue clearly calling for a free vote of conscience – was both clumsy and stupid.
Their early rise to leadership status in the DA seems to have convinced all these ex-DA figures that they really are political leaders of note and so, when they couldn’t get their way in the DA they mainly decided (Mazibuko is the sole exception) to lead political parties of their own, often predicting great things for them. This has not turned out well. Mamphela Ramphele’s Agang (“Build South Africa”) party got 0.28% of the vote in 2014, 0.08% in 2019 and in 2024 it disappeared and supported De Lille’s party, GOOD. But that didn’t do much good for GOOD which went from 0.4% in its first election to 0.18% in 2024. Mmusi Maimane’s Build One South Africa got only 0.41% in 2024. (The DA’s website calls “Be part of building one South Africa for all” and the breakaways just keep copying that.)
Against that background Action SA’s 1.19% is not so bad (though before the election it had claimed 10%) but it remains to be seen if it, or any of the other breakaways, can resist the general trend – visible too for the UDM and Cope – to peak in its first election and then gradually collapse as voters realise that these are essentially no-hopers. The other trend, visible in all these parties is for the breakaway founder to become the Permanent Leader. De Lille, Mashaba and Maimane are all the unchallengeable bosses of their parties and don’t bother about elective conferences or democracy in general. This is because, after all, they have all launched their careers as Leaders and once they couldn’t get their way in the DA they have determined to stay Leaders even it it means founding their own hopeless parties. For these are essentially ego-trips. All these breakaways would have done far better to accept defeat in the DA like gentlemen or gentlewomen and continued their careers as senior figures in that party.
However, the situation in Tshwane, with its knife-edge majority, gives Action SA an unusual degree of power in determining the capital’s future. If Mashaba decides to throw his weight behind the ANC he can consign the city to a return to looting, dilapidation and bankruptcy. And this time it might not recover. Mayor Brink has done a sterling and courageous job but to see that all thrown away and power returned to looters and incompetents would break anyone’s heart. This seems a dreadful price to pay for the fact that Mashaba is thrashing around because his political ambitions aren’t working out. But there are some serious politicos in Action SA – people like Michael Beaumont and Athol Trollip – and it is difficult to believe that they have got into politics so they can lay waste to the country’s capital. A great deal now depends on them.
Read also:
- SA’s GNU is sapping accountability, BOSA Party says
- Magnus Heystek sees hope for SA’s economic revival: Calls for bold tax reforms
- Ramaphosa’s GNU plan to focus on economic growth and infrastructure reform
