Coalitions: MAJOR shake-up in SA politics?

NEC has resolved that the DA should be the last resort to form coalition governments with at a local level. The majority of members blame DA partnership in GNU for losing traditional voter support. So, two things to pick up there: the ANC says the DA should be the last resort, and the ANC-NEC blames their current partnership with the DA.

For the ANC's significant electoral losses since 2024. This is a seismic announcement. The country was waiting with bated breath to see which way the ANC would go. Because the DA has already ruled out a coalition with MK and EFF, it only really has one option in the Big Hout Dang metros, and that is to partner with the ANC. However, the ANC then is in the driver's seat because it can decide whether it wants to go with ActionSA and other.

Parties or whether it goes with the DA, the party that got the most votes but not 50% of the votes. And so that meeting seems to have resolved that the ANC will only go with the DA as a last resort. In other words, the ANC will not look to partner with the DA in local government coalitions unless it absolutely has to. Now, to take a step back, this is what I believe this means for who will govern Joburg, Tshwane, and

Ekurhuleni, and then we'll come to some of the other metros. It's looking like at the moment we could be getting ready for Mayor Herman Mashaba in Johannesburg. What's more, we could be getting ready for another term for Mayor Dr. Nasiphi Moya in Tshwane. Fun fact, Nasiphi Moya was my politics tutor at UCT.

NSA would really come out as the winner of these coalition negotiations because they would get the two crown jewels of local government: both Joburg and Tshwane. Major populations, major economies, and a major opportunity ahead of 2029 to show what you can do in local government so that you can grow your voter base even further. So I think, as things stand, if this ANC NEC resolution

Is indeed true, and ultimately we'll only know when the ANC speaks publicly that the ANC is going to look to do a deal with ActionSA in Gauteng. And what that would mean is that the third big metro in Gauteng, that being Ekurhuleni, would probably go to the ANC as a consolation prize. So what you would then have in terms of the three big metros in Gauteng, Joburg, Twain, and Ekurhuleni, is that ActionSA would take two of those.