Tshwane Mayor Cilliers Brink on Wednesday made a call for the metro’s multiparty coalition bloc to be preserved for the sake of progress it made in service delivery despite the looming threats by the ANC to oust him from office.
This was during a media briefing at Tshwane House, where he was accompanied by two FF-Plus, IFP and DA multiparty coalition partners, who pledged their support for Brink’s administration to remain in charge.
Despite being members of the coalition, ActionSA’s MMCs - Hannes Coetzee and Deputy Mayor Nasiphi Moya - who doubles as MMC for Social Development - snubbed the media briefing.
Their absence was in spite of the utterance by Brink that he has “an excellent working relationship” with Moya.
Speculations have been rife that Brink would be removed as mayor after 17 months in office amid a political fallout between ActionSA and his political party, the DA.
The latest political fracas played out on Tuesday night when ActionSA leader, Herman Mashaba, accused Brink on X of being arrogant and dishonest.
He was reacting to Brink’s television interview in which he said in part that “ActionSA has not told us that they are withdrawing from the coalition and that their conduct has been unfortunate”.
Posting on X, Mashaba said: “This man’s arrogance is very unhelpful and disrespectful. Dishonesty at another level. The City of Tshwane is now sitting with an ANC (council) Speaker because the DA deliberately spoiled their ballots when expected to vote for an ActionSA Speaker. We are not fools.”
He was making reference to the DA councillors’s 69 ballots that were declared spoiled by the Independent Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) during council speaker’s election in March last year.
As a result of the spoiled ballots, a sole African Transformation Movement councillor, Mncedi Ndzwanana, emerged victorious with 105 votes against ActionSA’s Kholofelo Morodi who got 37.
Brink said he previously made attempts in vain to meet with ActionSA national leaders with a view to preserve the coalition.
He expressed concern that if ActionSA and ANC would decide to go to bed together they would have to introduce EFF into the fold because the two parties’ councillors won’t make the 50% threshold to run the municipality.
He described the EFF as the “anti-constitutionalist, anti-non-racial party, the party implicated in the looting of the VBS bank and has caused much chaos in other municipalities in Gauteng”.
He said some ActionSA members had approached him to raise concerns about the direction their party was taking.
Asked about the reasons behind the political fallout between the DA and ActionSA, he said: “I can speculate but I can certainly tell you that it is nothing that has been registered in the structures of the coalition.”
The coalition structures, he said, provided for a dispute resolution mechanism which ActionSA never used to air their recent grievances.
As far as Brink was concerned nothing has changed in terms of the coalition agreement.
“There might be political consideration with Herman Mashaba about how he feels but that has nothing to do with the people of Tshwane,”he said.
He said Mashaba comments on social media attacking the coalition didn't reflect anything said at the local level.
He said ActionSA representatives opted to not participate in the media briefing until Brink’s meeting with their national chairperson Michael Beaumont to discuss “uncertainty” created by Mashaba’s comment had materialised.
The meeting in question, according to Brink, was scheduled in the past few days and repeatedly postponed until Tuesday. It is yet to take place.
He confirmed that there had been talks by the national leadership of both the ANC and DA to avert the tabling of a motion of no confidence against him.
“Those discussions were about not forming a grand coalition in Tshwane but of not bringing a motion of no confidence,” he said.
In a media statementon Wednesday ActionSA Gauteng provincial chairperson, Funzi Ngobeni, said his party declined an invitation from the coalition management committee to attend the press conference because it is “currently reviewing our position within the multi-party coalition”.
Pretoria News