New twists in coalition talks

Geordin Hill-Lewis meeting with ActionSA's president Herman Mashaba. Now, ActionSA and the Democratic Alliance are two parties that have a very storied rivalry. I liken them to the Hatfields and the McCoy's. There is very clearly no love loss between these two parties. This stems from not just Herman Mashaba's ejection from the Democratic Alliance, but you also talk about the animus.

Surrounded the 2021 local government election, where it was seen that ActionSA took votes and wards away from the Democratic Alliance, leaving them a little bit weaker in an election where they expected to come out a bit stronger. Now, these two are meeting to have conversations. These are conversations that are happening at an extremely high level. Now, this signals to those of us that have been watching how the local government landscape could shift. It sends a signal of a few ways, and that's one where we've been.

Talking about a DA ActionSA coalition and the real impediments to such a coalition taking place being the personalities involved. In Joburg, it is Herman Mashaba and Helen Zille. In Tshwane, it is Silas Brink and Dr. Nasiphi Moya. Now, with these two leaders meeting at an executive level, there comes the possibility that Geordin Hill-Lewis, a new leader for the Democratic Alliance, who has the pressure on him now.

Now, to demonstrate that he can lead his party through tricky negotiations. This is an opportunity for Hill-Lewis to, in effect, either pivot and adapt the DA's pre-local government election strategy for how they'd put coalitions together by dumping their existing mayoral candidate in the city of Johannesburg, Helen Zille, if he is really coveting a deal with.

ActionSA. Now, let me actually take a step back and explain to you why I'm saying this. For the Democratic Alliance, this election is a do or die. They have performed very well, but now governing becomes the biggest question mark around how these elections impact their growth and the momentum that they use to steam towards 2018.

29th national and provincial government elections. For Geordin Hill-Lewis, if winning Joburg is by far the most coveted prize that he has in terms of how things metro, given that Johannesburg was the battleground city, battleground metro of this election cycle, if he's able to carve out a deal with Herman Mashaba, which says, listen,