Premier Lesufi halts Gauteng cabinet announcement after negotiations with DA stall

It‘s back to the negotiating table for the ANC and DA in Gauteng after efforts to form a provincial government of unity again failed on Monday.

Premier Lesufi halts Gauteng cabinet announcement after negotiations with DA stall

Gauteng’s 16 million residents will have to wait for longer before they have a new government, owing to yet another deadlock between the ANC and DA over fundamental issues including portfolio allocations and proportional representation.

On Monday evening, Premier Panyaza Lesufi was due to announce his cabinet but was reportedly instructed to halt the announcement at the 11th hour by his party’s mother body after an agreement to form a government of provincial unity had not been reached with the DA, which garnered the second-highest number of votes in the province.

This was the second time the announcement had been postponed in the space of a week. Last week, Lesufi said the announcement had been cancelled because negotiators wanted more time.

Before the planned announcement on Monday, the DA, which received 27.4% of the provincial vote in the recent election, confirmed it would boycott the briefing as no deal had been reached with the ANC, which won 34.7% on 29 May.

Bad faith

DA Gauteng leader Solly Msimanga confirmed to Daily Maverick that a meeting between DA and ANC officials had taken place earlier in the day, but did not yield positive results, owing to the ANC’s insistence on giving the DA two of 11 MEC positions, when the party wanted “fair representation”.

“At today’s meeting they told us about two positions and we said that cannot happen. If you want to work with us, then let us work. We were very straightforward. They were meant to get back to us by 16h00 and they didn’t. At 5pm, we saw an alert that an announcement would take place this evening. When we reached out to enquire, they said they would continue with or without us,” Msimanga told Daily Maverick.

Msimanga said as a starting point, the party wanted a split of six ANC MECs and five DA MECs.

“And then when you start introducing other small parties, you will take one from the ANC, other from the DA,” a proposal which was rejected by the ANC.

Msimanga accused the ANC of negotiating in bad faith and defying instructions from the national structures which, following negotiations, allowed President Cyril Ramaphosa to announce his Cabinet on Sunday.

‘We have been principled’

Last week, Daily Maverick reported that the ANC’s Gauteng leadership had been locked in negotiations to appoint a cabinet. The dominant view of the provincial leadership was to continue its working relationship with the EFF and possibly form an alliance with the MK party.

Gauteng ANC provincial secretary Thembinkosi “TK” Nciza said on Monday, “The EFF and MK were not going to be part of the executive but we are engaging them because we are politicians.”

ANC insiders said that during talks with the Red Berets, the EFF had asked the ANC to reinstate its provincial leader Nkululeko Dunga as finance MMC in the City of Ekurhuleni. Dunga was removed recently by Ekurhuleni’s mayor, Doctor Xhakaza, who said the decision had been taken to fast-track the completion and approval of the annual budget.

The ANC has said that it and the DA would go back to the negotiating table after they were instructed to do so by their leaders. The ANC said the announcement on the executive would be moved to Tuesday, 2 July.

“From tomorrow this really must proceed because it is really delaying the people of Gauteng. It can’t be fair, it’s not right. The people of Gauteng have been waiting for their government,” Nciza told journalists.

The ANC’s Lebogang Maile said: “This is not a coalition with the DA, that’s why we must not reduce it to what the DA gets, but how are we accommodating all the political parties?

“The ANC in these negotiations, believe it or not, is the one that has been saying let us bring everybody, every party represented in the Gauteng legislature. The DA does not care, its attitude is that we are big parties, if we have a deal, we are sorted. We are saying no, we do not want that. We have been principled to say we will work even with parties with one seat,” said Maile.

Provincial instability

The IFP’s secretary-general in Gauteng, Alco Ngobese, said: “We are very disappointed as the IFP. The people of Gauteng deserve better. This is the economic hub of the country. What these squabbles do is bring about instability. The sooner a government is announced, the better.”

Before the latest failed attempt to announce the cabinet, the IFP was consulted about forming a government of provincial unity, and Ngobese was confident they would get a seat in the cabinet.

“There was no concrete agreement but the talks were quite positive, so we are confident that the IFP will get an executive position,” he said.

ActionSA is not part of the coalition negotiations, but its provincial leader Funzi Ngobeni said, “While the ANC and DA tussle for positions, residents have once again been abandoned by both the DA’s Solly Msimanga and the ANC’s Panyaza Lesufi, who evidently appear more interested in jockeying for positions than in addressing the urgent service delivery challenges that continue to cripple Gauteng and leave residents on the back foot.”

The Gauteng legislature consists of 80 seats: the ANC has 28 seats, followed by the DA with 22, the EFF with 11, the MK party with eight, ActionSA with three, the Freedom Front Plus and the PA with two each,  and the IFP, Rise Mzansi, Bosa and the ACDP with one seat each.

The impasse comes after Lesufi was re-elected unopposed as premier of the province on 14 June with the assistance of the DA. The ANC’s former arts and culture MEC in Gauteng, Morakane Mosupyoe, was elected unopposed as speaker of the legislature and the DA’s Refiloe Nt’sekhe was elected as the deputy speaker, also unopposed. DM

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