Cape Talk, Monday afternoon

Not that policy different. That's a big policy difference which we can speak about. But to understand that relationship, you have to go back to a day in October 2019 and to a couple of weeks before that day when I watched the absolute anger of Herman Mashaba as the DA's then leaders delivered the verdict on Musimaimani that reported just come out and he resigned a day later.

Shaba was enraged by that, and until then, he and Helen Zille had gotten on quite well. Since then, that relationship has just withered, and through the election campaign, it was truly, truly ugly. The city is best served by them allying with each other, but I don't know that the bad blood can sin a little bit to allow that to happen. Yeah, I mean, this is a very shallow analysis, but it seems to me to have some truth in it.

That ActionSA has done well in Gauteng because it's not the ANC and it has Abahambe as a significant plank in its policy platform. And it didn't do well in KwaZulu-Natal because the people who want the illegal immigrants out of KwaZulu-Natal were voting for MKP. They did okay in some municipalities in the Western Cape, but that role was largely played by the Patriotic Alliance. So, I mean, how significant

A challenge might it be? Because DA said we're only working with parties that have the same vision for the country as us, and ActionSA has said the same thing. Everybody says the same thing. So how important might that be? Because ActionSA has said: if you are not prepared to agree with us that illegal immigrants must be pushed out of the country as soon as possible, we won't work with you. People say things, Veryl, as you know just as well as I do, probably better. They say things in

Public and then in private, maybe they change. Yes, I think the lure of power, of office, of an opportunity to do the things that you said you will, somebody like Herman Mashaba really wants to be a leader of national stature, but on a local stage, he wants to be like perhaps Michael Bloomberg or some of the great mayors who he has followed, who he wants to come.

Himself as. And I guess in talks, if Michael Beaumont is in charge, maybe some of those hard positions will begin to give way to greater pragmatism. I do think we need to keep our eye on an alliance of the ANC, ActionSA, and other parties because the antipathy to the DA is quite big. And there are no clues around at the moment. It's too early for people with.

Sources, you know, people like you with sources to start getting a sense of the lie of the land? I think talk started happening today. The first instinct would be that you've got to keep this out of the media. We'll, of course, do our best to break that idea because I think there must be as much public scrutiny as possible of coalition talks. And I guess by tomorrow, we'll begin to get some sense of direction of where the talks are happening. My colleagues pointed me to an ex-