Athol Trollip knows how coalitions end: one made him mayor of Nelson Mandela Bay, another removed him. Speaking to Alec Hogg after ActionSA took dozens of former ANC wards in Gauteng, the party's parliamentary leader argued that the next move belonged to the DA, not ActionSA, and explained why a tidy three-way deal with the DA and the Freedom Front Plus was not the easy answer many expected. He revisited the 2016 Johannesburg negotiations that, in his telling, sit at the root of today's bad blood, pushed back on Tony Leon's and Prince Mashele's readings of the result, and set out what ActionSA wanted in Tshwane, Ekurhuleni and Nelson Mandela Bay. He also explained how a small Karoo town became ActionSA's newest foothold, and why he believed funders who walked away in 2024 would be back..Listen here.Edited transcript of the interview.Alec Hogg (00:02): Athol Trollip has seen this movie from the front row. He was mayor of Nelson Mandela Bay, put there by a coalition, and then pulled down by one. Now he's helping to negotiate the deals for ActionSA, the party which holds the balance of power in Gauteng and in a few other municipalities around the country. On Monday, his party's leader and founder, Herman Mashaba, gave me ActionSA's terms. Helen Zille, Cilliers Brink: not allowed. If they continue to be in the picture, well, it's not even worth scheduling a meeting. So is that the opening position or the last word? Athol Trollip from ActionSA, welcome. Good to talk with you. Before we go into anything, my goodness, you must be so excited about the performance that this party has put in. There were many who thought you were fighting a lost battle in Parliament with the handful of ActionSA parliamentary members. You certainly made your voices loud, and between yourself and Nasiphi Moya, who did an excellent job by all accounts as the mayor of Tshwane, you guys have just turned, or maybe made a big contribution to, the perception of ActionSA as a very viable long-term political player.Athol Trollip (01:31): Yeah, thank you very much, Alec. Look, I think it was certainly a team effort. As far as I'm concerned, and our parliamentary team, Tara Roos, a journalist from Business Day, wrote a very generous article to say that if you think the work in Parliament is insignificant, that the work of our six MPs in Parliament, actually being the unofficial opposition in Parliament, certainly played a role. You mentioned Nasiphi Moya. I think she has come to depict what South Africans would regard as your archetypal kind of successful mayor, hands on the ground. The fact that she was able, or ActionSA was able, to win the Bronkhorstspruit wards, most of them, after that Bronkhorstspruit chaos is because of the way she handled it. She said, I take responsibility. She's not responsible for putting chlorine in the water per se. But she said, I take responsibility. The buck stops here with me. She spent weeks and weeks, and even during the election and the day after the election, she was in Bronkhorstspruit. It's that kind of commitment to service delivery that South Africans have been dying for for a long time. And then, of course, our performance in Gauteng and also some of the northern provinces, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North West, are because of the fact that we built a foundation, and you can only build a house on a foundation. You know, in Gauteng, we hadn't had one ward. And I think now we've won 57 wards. That has been quite incredible. And I'm a bit disappointed with our performance in the Eastern Cape, but it's our first endeavour. And you know, the ANC is the hardest nut to crack in this province, because I think it's because of the fact that the umbilical cord is actually buried in the Eastern Cape. This is the home of the ANC. So it's been a tough nut to crack, but, as you said, we are in talks right now with a number of parties to go into government in two municipalities in the Eastern Cape, which is significant.Alec Hogg (03:36): Athol, what do you put this down to? And maybe actually, before you go there, 57 wards. Just explain what that means to people who are moving into the political environment for the first time.Athol Trollip (03:50): Yeah, so at local government level, we have a system called proportional representation. And every municipality is made up of a certain number of wards, of seats. And half of those seats come from wards, which are delineated areas of where voters live and vote. And the other half of the seats are proportional seats. So if you win a certain percentage in a municipality without any wards, you will get a proportional representation even though you didn't win any wards outright. If you do win wards, you subtract those and you get less proportional seats. Now, what has happened is that we have catapulted up the list of bigger parties in South Africa because in 2021, we won no wards in Johannesburg, but we had 44 councillors. We've now won 50-plus wards and our number of councillors has doubled. In the case like the ANC, where most of those wards came from, the ANC has won wards which are their strongholds, but they have had no overhang proportion, so they get no proportional representation seats. So it is a system that's designed to give parties that aren't big enough or strong enough to win wards some representation. For example, in Nelson Mandela Bay, we didn't win any wards, but we have two councillors, which is why this proportional system is designed: to prevent a winner-takes-all scenario and to give every South African that votes for a party of their choice some kind of representation.Alec Hogg (05:28): It is an interesting system, because if you don't stand in a ward as a leader of the party, or somebody who sits in head office, and you don't actually go there and press the flesh and put yourself out, then the chances are, if you do very well in those wards, you won't actually be going back with your colleagues, even though you are the leader, say.Athol Trollip (05:54): Well, that's exactly what's happened, Alec, in a number of big municipalities, Joburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, Nelson Mandela Bay, where ANC leaders, for example, who are currently mayors or were currently mayors, they were on the PR list and not standing in a ward. And now, because they've got no PR seats, they're not coming back to council. So you'll remember that Andile Lungisa recently won quite a significant court case against his party about being number one on the PR list. He was removed. He won the court case, he was put back on there. But that was a Pyrrhic victory because they've got no PR seats. So he won't be going to council and he can't be a mayor. And, you know, incidentally, and quite ironically in that regard, if we talk about that example, a guy like Xolani Khumalo in Ekurhuleni...Alec Hogg (06:37): Extraordinary story.Athol Trollip (06:48): He was the ActionSA mayoral candidate. He was number one on the PR list, but he also stood in his ward and he won his ward. So he ensured doubly that he was going to go to council.Alec Hogg (07:00): That's quite a performance, though, to pick up 57. So in other words, 57 mini elections that you won in those wards. What do you put it down to? And I ask you this because Helen Zille said, when I spoke to her on Monday, she said that Herman Mashaba had run, well, ActionSA had run a campaign which was aggressive towards illegal immigrants.Athol Trollip (07:07): Yeah, yeah, and you know it.Alec Hogg (07:28): Is that... presumably you would read that a little differently.Athol Trollip (07:31): No, look, I think it's certainly one of the issues that allowed us to get traction and win those wards in Gauteng, which essentially has broken the ANC's back, because, you know, we went into places like Soweto, Soshanguve, Mamelodi, Atteridgeville, many of those areas, and we just took most of the wards, if not all of the wards, in many of those regions, big township regions. So I think illegal immigration, you know, for South Africans, I think it's not a big issue. It is a big issue. It affects poor, unemployed South Africans big time. It affects our economy. It impacts on our formal, legal economy, because the illegal economy is growing in leaps and bounds because of that growth in the illegal immigrant sector. So it is a big issue. But I also think that... I was listening to an interview with Tony Leon this morning with The Common Sense, and I did smile to myself when I listened to the interview, because this young man by the name of Gabriel was talking to Tony about how well we did and what will happen to us. So his slip was showing a little bit about where they align themselves. But, you know, Tony Leon made a really interesting comment. And he said that the totality of support for ActionSA was almost entirely from former ANC wards. And he said that as if, you know, that is the Achilles heel of our party. Now I want to tell you one thing: that is the holy grail of politics in South Africa. To take ANC wards from the ANC is not a weakness, it's a significant strength, because no political party other than an ANC breakaway party, such as COPE or EFF or MKP, has ever been able to do that. Yes, the DA will tell you that they grew by so much African support, but they can't take a significant number of ANC wards. ActionSA has actually achieved the holy grail in South African politics by taking ANC wards for ActionSA.Alec Hogg (09:52): Tony Leon's also a columnist now on BizNews as well. And when we had a conversation, he said, and this was before the election, he said that ActionSA had made a switcheroo, as he described it, by going from the suburbs into the townships. Clearly that was a masterstroke.Athol Trollip (10:10): Well, you know, it's not only a masterstroke. Another observation that Tony made this morning, he said that, you know, the parties that are in negotiations must honour their voters. So we don't have the same voters as ActionSA, as the DA. And the DA must honour their voters and we must honour our voters. So that's what we're going to do. And we realised in 2024, because in 2021 we actually got quite a significant number of suburban votes, stroke white voters, but we realised in 2024 that we were not that attractive, and that the DA was aggressively campaigning in that sector. And their aggressive campaign, backed by hundreds of millions of rands, allowed them to grow from about 22% to 24-point-something percent. We took a different strategic direction, and we realised that in a country such as South Africa, where the majority of the people are black, and they come primarily from townships, that unless you can get significant black support, you're going to be a bit-part player in South African politics. And the big parties in South African politics up until this election have been the ANC, that has predominantly black support; the DA, that has predominantly minority support; and the MKP and the IFP, that have primarily ethnic support. Those are the big players. So we took a strategic decision that we are going to go... and obviously every vote counts. And I'll tell you, Alec, that, you know, history is amazing, because I was once involved in a dead tie in Buffalo City years ago, in a ward called Cambridge, that was an ANC-held ward, and we fought a by-election there and fought like crazy. In fact, it was an election, not a by-election. And we had a dead tie. And we'd only won three wards, and we had to toss the coin with the ANC, and they won the toss. And I thought it was just so unfair. But, you know, the wheel turns, and in Johannesburg we won one ward by one vote. And in Limpopo, one big ward, I mean, where there were thousands and thousands of votes, we had a one-vote victory.Athol Trollip (12:28): And in Limpopo, there was a dead tie and we had to toss the coin, and this time around we won. The SACP also had a dead tie with the ANC and they tossed the coin and they won. So the tide is turning.Alec Hogg (12:43): Looks like the ANC is very much on the back foot, even with coin tossing nowadays. Athol, Corné Mulder, I spoke to him yesterday. He kept pushing a deal with ActionSA and the DA, and for himself as well. And his logic was, if you put the three parties together, you guys can run Gauteng, essentially, the three big municipalities. Is that something that, well, is that what you guys are talking about in your powerhouse?Athol Trollip (13:16): Yeah, very definitely. I think, apart from all the other sensation around what our president says, our president and our chairperson have said we are open to talking to all political parties, and we are doing that. We literally are doing it and publicising every time we come out of a meeting with another party. So we definitely are speaking to all other parties. Let me just get this issue out of the room so we can go and talk about what Mr Mulder said. You know, Herman Mashaba takes a lot of flak for calling Helen Zille a racist, and the same for Cilliers Brink. And you know, I always give a lot of credit to South Africans whose home language is not English and who can speak English really well, because there are very few people in this country whose home language is not a black ethnic language who can speak those languages. Many white South Africans can only speak one or two languages, and they're English and Afrikaans, but most black people in this country can speak their own vernacular tongue and English and Afrikaans. But sometimes things get taken in a context, and it's not only a context. I mean, I've heard Herman refer to Helen as a racist. Now, some people in this country think that if you call somebody a racist, if you call a white person a racist, they must have used the K-word. And that's not the case. If you perceive that you're being treated in a racist way, it's a perception. It's how things make you feel. And it's more like superiority or arrogance that brings back reminiscent memories of an oppressive past, that then can come out as being called racist. So I can tell you for a fact...Alec Hogg (14:57): Mm-hmm.Athol Trollip (15:05): ...that those two people that ActionSA find anathema to dealing with display the worst kind of arrogance and superiority that then invokes that feeling that they are racist. So there's a visceral dislike there. But, you know, in politics, and especially after elections, and when you've had a good election, but also when you've had a bad election, you should be humble. I mean, humility should come to the fore. And, you know, the people have spoken, the results are there. No parties have got any outright majorities in Gauteng. So it demands of us, behoves us, to go and negotiate. And negotiations are tough, Alec. Nobody goes into a negotiation and says, I'll accept any deal. But what I do find extraordinary, because I've experienced it, literally hundreds if not thousands of messages from my friends, from acquaintances, from my race group, who are sending me messages to say, Athol, it's now the right time to do the right thing. And my first question is, which right? Right as in right in politics, or right as in right for country and community and city? And it's almost... it's unbelievable, because there's this feeling that...Alec Hogg (16:24): Mm-hmm.Athol Trollip (16:32): ...we are now the silver medal holder in Tshwane and the bronze medal holder in Johannesburg, and that we must hand our silver and bronze medal to the gold medal winner. It doesn't work like that. You've got to honour your electorate, as Tony Leon said. And if the gold medal winner thinks that it's their time to take the silver and bronze without making any concession, then they're going to end up with neither. So I want to say that it is really a fraught time, but essentially, Alec, and this is what my response has been to all those superior messages I've received: it's the DA's choice. They're the biggest party in Gauteng. The DA must choose whether they want to go with the ANC or ActionSA. And if it's ActionSA, they must court ActionSA. And if it's the ANC, they must court the ANC. They mustn't expect to be courted. They... or the Cinderella.Alec Hogg (17:35): Mm. Helen Zille said that if the roles were reversed, if the DA had 16 and ActionSA had 35, and they said we don't want Herman as the mayor, she said that would be outrageous. And she's intimated that they are being disadvantaged in some way. What's your thought? Excuse me, Athol. What's your thought on that?Athol Trollip (18:08): Yeah, look, let's look back in history, because it's always helpful. In 2016, I remember when I became the mayor in Nelson Mandela Bay, we had 47% and we could put a coalition together that gave us a majority. In Johannesburg, Herman Mashaba was the mayoral candidate, and we couldn't put a majority coalition together, excuse me. But the EFF offered us a condition. They said, we will come in to a cooperative agreement with you, as long as your candidate is not Herman Mashaba. And at the time, the DA said, well, no deal. Herman Mashaba is our candidate. And this is where the irony kicks in, and irony is always so beautiful. The irony is that we dug our heels in, and we said, and I say we, people like Helen Zille, Mmusi Maimane and myself and the FedEx [DA Federal Executive], dug our heels in. Herman Mashaba was not even on that FedEx. He wasn't even part of the negotiating team. We gave him the poisoned chalice of running a minority coalition in Johannesburg with the EFF as the partners. And the irony is that we stuck, we dug our heels in and we said, it's Herman or nothing. And Herman became the mayor, and then later Zille accused Herman of becoming an EFF mayor. And that's the irony. Herman Mashaba was chosen by the DA because they believed he was the best person to fix Johannesburg. And when the EFF said not Herman, the DA insisted it was Herman and gave him a partnership with the EFF. And then Zille conveniently turned around and said Herman became the EFF mayor. But she went further. She went further and said that he facilitated EFF corruption and that he opened the door to the EFF to loot city enterprises like Pikitup and various others. So by implication, she says Herman Mashaba is a corrupt EFF apparatchik. Now she cleverly says she's never said nasty things about Herman, but indirectly that's a very nasty thing. And she said that Herman has said, you know, libellous things about her. That's equally libel. So this is where this...Athol Trollip (20:32): ...bad, bad blood comes in. But Herman Mashaba has also said: get rid of Zille and you can get rid of me too. Find somebody else. And that's infinitely different to what happened in 2016, where the DA just said, it's our way or the highway. Herman is now saying, get rid of Zille, I'll get out of the picture. Let's find somebody else that's more palatable, and let's put the people of Johannesburg and Tshwane first.Alec Hogg (21:02): And Ekurhuleni, presumably.Athol Trollip (21:05): And Ekurhuleni, we've said, you can take Ekurhuleni. We've even said to the ANC, you can take Ekurhuleni. You can take Johannesburg. We believe that Nasiphi Moya has done an incredible job, so we would like her to continue there. So it's not all or nothing from our side. I think we've been quite candid, but essentially we are negotiating. So we're not going to give everything up upfront. When it comes to push and shove, which hasn't got there yet... in fact, many parties have not even met with each other. The days are running out, and we'll get to a point where you have to fish or cut bait. And at that point, we will decide what concessions we will make, and the other parties too will decide what concessions they will make. But I want to make one other interesting observation from the interview with Tony Leon this morning, where he said that the ANC will be a lot more circumspect about doing deals with ActionSA because of what happened in Tshwane with Nasiphi Moya, because Nasiphi Moya became very popular because of her work, and that essentially had hurt the ANC. And by implication, he was then saying that the ANC will be nervous about dealing with ActionSA because ActionSA can steal their lunch. And I thought that was quite an interesting observation, because what that means, the corollary of that, is that the ANC might cut a deal with the DA, because the DA can't steal their lunch, and that they essentially fish in two completely different ponds. And, you know, these are the dynamics that the man in the street doesn't often understand. The man in the street just says, listen, one plus one makes two, or one and two makes three, and you need three to win, therefore go for it. And then there's another very important perspective, and it's important. If the DA and ActionSA and the Freedom Front Plus alone go into a coalition and govern...Athol Trollip (23:11): ...it can be regarded as a flashback from the past, where white parties go into government. We're not a white party, we've shown that by winning all those wards from the ANC. We're not a white party, but that's what people call us. People call us a white party. We're a fledgling of the DA, blah, blah, blah. And then, if it looks like it might be something from the past... if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it might just be a duck. And people are very worried about that. So, for example, as I said, I've been involved in negotiations with a number of parties in the Eastern Cape to hopefully bring about a new government in Makana, which is Grahamstown [Makhanda], and Nelson Mandela Bay. And that model looks infinitely better, because it is a model of parties that have worked together, can work together, have cooperated before, have built some trust. And it doesn't just look like something from the past. It doesn't look like a reincarnation of a past government. It looks more like a South African scenario, where the DA and ActionSA and the UDM and, you know, the Freedom Front Plus and various other parties come together to put the people of Nelson Mandela Bay first, and even a civic movement in Makana, two civic movements, actually. So, yeah, I think we... I do believe, after this election, Alec, that South Africa will never be the same. This was the election that finally broke the voodoo of ANC domination, of the fact that they always appeared that they were invincible. And despite the fact that ANC ministers and MECs were able to provide T-shirts in their hundreds of thousands, I can only think they came from their departmental budgets for...Alec Hogg (24:45): Yeah.Athol Trollip (25:08): ...promotional activities, it didn't work anymore. It didn't work anymore. And that voodoo is gone now, and South Africa is maturing. We're now going into our, you know, our 20s, 30s, if you like, but we're no longer political teenagers. We're now into our 20s and 30s. And I think we're going into an interesting time.Alec Hogg (25:31): What message do you believe the voters sent? If you can encapsulate that, what is the message they want politicians to hear?Athol Trollip (25:41): Essentially, the first message is that South African voters, primarily black South African voters, have said enough is enough. We can't carry on being unemployed and dependent on R350 grants. It's no longer tolerable. Can't. All communities have said we can't sit without water and electricity for weeks on end. Our roads are untrafficable. Crime is out of control, and we don't trust the government to deal with that. And the government is the ANC currently. They run most municipalities, they run most provinces. So they've been given an unambiguous message. But I think the other part of the message is that South Africans, despite the fact that still the voter turnout was pathetically low, a bit better than last year, last local government election, because the majority in the local government election was 53% of registered voters that didn't pitch up. Now that is a significant body in the South African body politic. We're now just above 50% turnout, but voters, especially young voters who always thought that their vote was a waste of time, will now realise that their vote is significantly powerful. And I think we're going to go through a period of much better political activism and public involvement in politics.Alec Hogg (27:11): What I'd really like you to give some insight on: Prince Mashele, ahead of the, or rather just after the vote, said that whoever coalesces with the ANC will be punished in 2029. And his view was that the message that voters had sent is: we do not want the ANC to be governing us anymore. We are happy for the DA to be governing us, but we want ActionSA to be keeping an eye on the DA, because we're not sure they're going to be doing the right thing. That's what Prince said. He knows your party well, he knows the system well. Does he have a point that is worth taking with respect?Athol Trollip (27:59): Yeah, so first of all, look, I think Prince got a couple of things wrong. He didn't see our performance coming, and he still hasn't said much about that other than well done. But, you know, I love these pollsters that make predictions. They'll always remind you when their predictions were close; they never talk about their predictions that were way off. Secondly, he also said that Herman Mashaba knows nothing about politics. I think these results show that Herman Mashaba is quite an astute politician. Might not be the most erudite politician in South Africa, but he's certainly astute. As for going into a coalition with the ANC being terminal, I think you would be really, really confused if you think the ANC is still not a player in South Africa. I'm referring repeatedly to an interview with Tony Leon because it's firmly imprinted on my mind this morning. Because I think, you know, politicians and leaders must think about what commentators and the public say. You can't just live in your own echo chamber. And Tony Leon said that the ANC still hold most of the political cards in this country. The ANC is still the biggest party in South Africa by a long way. So I don't think it's terminal. And an illustration of that is that the DA have been in the GNU with the ANC for the past two and a half years, and it certainly wasn't terminal for them. They've had their second-best election ever. Their best election, incidentally, was still in 2016 that they blamed [Mmusi] Maimane for and brought Helen Zille back to fix everything. And Helen Zille still hasn't got us back to 20... got the DA back to 26%. So, yeah, I think you've got to be circumspect. And let me give you an example. Dada Morero is not the candidate to be the mayor in Johannesburg, because he wasn't the ward councillor and they have no PR candidates. So I think the ANC are going to have to think very hard about, you know, who they put into government there, and whether they have the human resources to govern with any party remains to be seen. But, for example, in Nelson Mandela Bay...Athol Trollip (30:24): ...I don't think ActionSA or my president or my Senate would be able to convince me to go into a government with the ANC in Nelson Mandela Bay. The ANC have destroyed Nelson Mandela Bay. So I couldn't see myself going in there. We have taken a position in ActionSA that we must first speak to the biggest party, because that's essentially recognising what voters want. So the DA is the biggest party in Nelson Mandela Bay. The DA was in government there before. I was the mayor there with the DA before. I know those people. I've worked with those people. I can work with them again. There's no trust deficit there. And I know that that recipe of success can be replicated. So to me, there's no doubt that we could and should be working with the DA there. Joburg is different, because there's a human resource deficit, because they have no PR representatives on any of their lists, big lists. So they have no big names. But the various other parties in the mix that stood in the election, some did well, some did less well, have got some very smart people as their candidates. So you could put a multiparty coalition together of competent, capable people that could much better run Joburg than it was run before. Because Joburg was run by, you know, Al Jama-ah mayors, for example, that were disastrous. They were the tip of the dog's tail and they thought that they wore the collar, but they didn't. The ANC wore the collar. Then the ANC took over because the DA opted out of two coalitions where they were leading. They opted out and gave it back to the ANC. So I think Johannesburg's slightly different, because there could be a multiparty coalition where there are capable human resources that can be deployed to start turning that city around. And Alec, you know, obviously budget deficits are big issues; economic growth, or lack of it, in this country is a major issue for a city like Johannesburg. But I learned governing the city, and I'd never been a mayor before, but I'd run my own business before, that governing a city is just like any business. You've got to make sure the inlet pipe's bigger than the outlet pipe, and that...Athol Trollip (32:52): ...managers are held to account, and that directors who don't direct their departments must be fired. It's as simple as that. You know, in Makana, for example, the people who are supposed to clean the town never clean the town. They just clock in and clock out, and nobody holds the director of parks or environment to account for the fact that the parks are not clean and the grass is not cut and the pavement is not cut. So it's going to take tough leadership decisions, management decisions that the ANC is not capable of doing, because cadre deployment has diffused the difference between administration and politics. Politics and administration should be on two separate train tracks. But as soon as they come together, you end up with a derailment. And that's what's happened in ANC-led municipalities. The two tracks have become fused into one, where there's no differentiation. You've got politicians in the administration, you've got politicians in the executive positions, and they manipulate the whole tender process for their own benefit. And that's what's happened. So you need to fix that. And the only cure for cancer is chemotherapy. And chemotherapy doesn't keep cancer cells alive. It kills cancer cells.Alec Hogg (34:01): Yes, but...Athol Trollip (34:14): So you've got to have a chemotherapy regime in cities like that.Alec Hogg (34:22): Athol, what do you make of what Corné Mulder was saying, what he said to me yesterday?Athol Trollip (34:27): I think that's the easy option. And Corné's constituency makes that a very palatable, easy option, where you simply say, let's do DA, ActionSA, Freedom Front Plus. It's kumbaya. Let's make it happen. We know how to govern. We hold the magic key to good governance. But we don't have the same constituency as the Freedom Front Plus. We have a completely different constituency, which is now unambiguous. We have achieved the holy grail. We have broken the backbone of ANC strongholds in ANC wards. So black South Africans who have had enough of the ANC have identified ActionSA as an alternative. So we can't simply ignore our voters. As Tony Leon said, we've got to honour our voters. So we are unfortunately not in a kumbaya kind of situation where we will just go along to get along.Alec Hogg (35:31): Frans Cronje, ahead of the election, said that there is an obvious coalition between the DA with the middle class and the ANC with the emerging middle class. I put this question to Herman, and I don't know if he actually answered it fully. Has ActionSA, after this election, moved into that position, the holy grail that you spoke about, of taking the emerging middle class in South Africa?Athol Trollip (36:04): Well, I think so. I think very definitely so. The one difficulty nowadays of tracking suburban votes... in the old days, in the dark days of apartheid, whites lived in suburban areas and blacks lived in townships. Now the middle-class black community doesn't live in townships, it lives in suburban areas. So measuring the racial component of the votes in suburbia is not so easy anymore. So it's almost impossible to define or allocate votes. Absolutely. If you look at a township, for example, you can easily allocate those votes, because black people live in townships, coloured people live in townships, and white people or minorities live in suburbia mainly. But the black middle class has moved very firmly into suburbia. So I believe that we did get votes in suburban areas, and that came from the black middle class. But we also get black middle-class votes that allowed us to win those wards in Johannesburg and Tshwane and Ekurhuleni, and also in Limpopo, Mpumalanga and the North West. So we've got two phenomena in this country. We've got an emerged black middle class, and we've got an emerging or aspirant black middle class that is being held back by a stagnant economy that just won't grow. And we saw what happened to the unemployment figures in this last quarter. They've gone up again.Alec Hogg (37:30): Shocking.Athol Trollip (37:32): And that was what the GNU was supposed to remedy. That was their big promise: we'll grow the economy and create jobs. And all we've done is seen a shrinking economy and more and more unemployment. So I believe firmly that we have filled that gap... not fully, that we are filling the gap of representing the black middle class and the aspiring black middle class. And if you just throw that fledgling support...Alec Hogg (37:56): Mm-hmm.Athol Trollip (38:02): ...away and just bundle it into the most convenient coalition without negotiating all the possibilities... And I think that's what South Africans don't understand. Fourteen days, Alec, is like... it's a minuscule amount of time if you consider a term of office is five years. South Africans who voted on Wednesday want the result on Thursday morning. And they say, come on, you guys are wasting time. There's still a lot of water that's going to go under these bridges. And we've got to let the water go under the bridges. We've got to walk over the bridges. We've got to go and meet other people. We've got to convince South Africans that whatever decision is made finally will affect South Africans today. And it will affect political parties in two years' time at the next election, and five years' time at the next election. So going into an easy-come, easy-go kind of coalition now might be terminal in five years' time. And it might hold you back in two years' time for the national elections. So you've got to do forecasting. It's not just a simple solution of we count the votes now, we just divvy up and we move on. No, it's not as easy as that. And I can assure you, I don't have direct insight into or participation in the Gauteng coalition negotiations, but I am a leader in this party. We are having constant discussions amongst ourselves on the Senate and in our management groups. And we are going to find the best options for South Africans, and obviously also look at the best options for us as a growing party.Alec Hogg (39:50): Athol, I'm going to put you on the spot here. In the conversation with Herman, he said that nationally you spent R80 million in ActionSA. The DA spent R200 million in Gauteng alone. Now that R200 million comes from somewhere. And when there are funders involved, they would have a requirement for a return on investment. The obvious question there is that businesses love stability. And you would imagine that the most stable thing, even though it might not be the best thing in the long term, but in the short term, would be the DA, which has got support from funders, doing a deal with the ANC. Is this something that you've worked into your calculations, that you're going to have to address in your negotiations?Athol Trollip (40:49): Yeah, obviously we have, because you need resources to fight campaigns. And that's why we were only able to compete in 30% of the municipalities, and we're still the fifth-biggest party in South Africa. That's what many pundits don't talk about: the fact that we contested a third of the municipalities that the ANC, DA, MKP, EFF, IFP contested. And we are right up there with them. Julius Malema was throwing his toys out of the cot when a journalist asked him about, are they going to go with one of the big parties? And he said, stop it, stop it, ActionSA is not a big party. Well, we're not a big party at 5%, but we're big compared to the EFF, who contested in all the municipalities and got fractionally more than we did. We are now a player. Business people like stability, as you said, absolutely. I think because it's good for markets and good for their business. But business people also like winners, and business people forecast as well, long-term. And business people that didn't give us any funding in this last election, and stopped funding us in 2024 because they thought that we were a spent force... and many businesses give some money to the ANC and some to the DA and some to other parties, in descending order... are going to like the fact that we've made a massive impact and broken the back of ANC supporters in their stronghold areas by winning wards. So we believe that business people are going to give us some more funding, because we really are sucking on the hind teat when it comes to funding. And I also want to pay a tribute to Herman Mashaba. I've worked with a number of political leaders in my past career. I've never once seen one political leader that I've worked with before put their hand anywhere near their pocket, or anywhere near their waistline even. They have always enjoyed the benefit of being the leader of a big party that has big funding. Herman Mashaba's hand is permanently in his pocket. It's something I've never experienced. It's something that is unique in this country. And he's got skin in the game, literally got skin in the game, and so has his family. So there's something quite inspiring working with leaders who don't tell you what to do, who do what needs to be done, and put their hand in their pocket.Athol Trollip (43:09): Yes, he might have a lot of money, but people who've got a lot of money look after their money. And Herman Mashaba has done that clearly, but his family invest in our efforts. And I want to pay tribute to him for doing that, because I've never experienced it before. And I think business people also like the fact that, when we go and speak to them about money, they don't want to hear from me how you're going to pay your telephone account and how you're going to pay your staff. They want to know what you're going to do with their money. How are you going to turn it into profit? How are you going to turn their investment into more votes? And I think what we achieved in Gauteng and in Limpopo and North West and in Mpumalanga, in fact right across the country... I mean, my colleague Dereleen James, she had a four-month campaign with no budget in the Western Cape, and she got seven councillors on that municipality. Voters are going to... I mean...Alec Hogg (44:01): Mm.Athol Trollip (44:04): ...funders are going to recognise that, because they see that they can make a profit from their investment. And the profit they want is to bring political stability, and to get away from the domination of one inept, corrupt political party that has done to South Africa what we find... the mess that we find ourselves in now.Alec Hogg (44:25): Just to close off on a happy note, especially for you: Laingsburg. That came out of nowhere. What happened there?Athol Trollip (44:32): Not really. Well, you know, not really. I want to put something into context for you and the people who don't know. Laingsburg as a whole municipality has less population than one ward in Johannesburg. In fact, than one of the smallest wards in Johannesburg. So, you know, it's a very, very small town. It was once washed away by a flood the whole time [sic]. But it's not a surprise. I had a small part to play in that. I remember going there with Lerato Ngobeni, Michael Beaumont and Dereleen James. We interviewed those candidates. We had a public meeting. We said we can win this municipality. We set up a strategy to win the municipality. And I went back there twice between that first meeting and the incredible result that we got now. And we won. It didn't happen by chance. It was strategically chosen. We only contested the Central Karoo municipalities in the Western Cape, and Cape Town. So it was about four municipalities. We chose them strategically, and now we've got another foothold. And I hope, and I believe, that our mayoral candidate and her colleague will govern Laingsburg better. And we'll have to go into a coalition. We've got three seats and the DA have got three seats. We got slightly more votes than they did, but we'll govern that municipality with the DA. There's no doubt about that. We're the biggest party. Well, if the DA doesn't want to come into government with us, that might show their hand. Because I think the DA also fears ActionSA. As Tony said, the ANC might fear ActionSA because of what Nasiphi Moya did in Tshwane. I think the DA is also very circumspect about ActionSA. But we're going to govern Laingsburg. And I can tell you that between Herman Mashaba, Michael Beaumont, Dereleen James and myself and Lerato Ngobeni, the people who started that and conceptualised and strategised that victory, we will make sure that we govern it properly.Alec Hogg (46:31): Is it a template?Athol Trollip (46:34): Well, we've got a template, you know. We've got a template from Tshwane. This is like a mini template. But, you know, if you can run a business, a small business, you can run a big business. And I believe that we can run Laingsburg and make it an example, if not a template.Alec Hogg (46:51): Athol Trollip, a defending champion at one of the BNCs. He won the golf competition. Defend your title.Athol Trollip (46:58): I hope you'll get me back. I hope you'll get me back. I need to defend my... I need to defend that.Alec Hogg: Well, you certainly will be receiving an invitation. Hopefully you can come and tell us your story at the next one in March. The invitation will be on its way, Athol.Alec Hogg (47:18): A very popular speaker at the BizNews Conference, and as I mentioned earlier, a pretty good golfer too. He will be defending his title when he returns. He is also on the negotiating team and is the leader of ActionSA in Parliament, actually leading the official opposition. I'm Alec Hogg with your BizNews Edge.