Mashaba disappointed with DA’s behaviour ahead of Tuesday deadline for council sitting

ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba says he’s disappointed with the way the Democratic Alliance (DA) is behaving ahead of Tuesday’s deadline for councils to be convened in municipalities.

At the weekend, ActionSA, the Freedom Front Plus, African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) and the United Democratic Movement (UDM) released a joint statement reacting to the DA’s position saying that the DA was placing potentially successful coalitions at risk.

The parties say it appears that the DA will go to metro council meetings in Tshwane and Johannesburg this week without any formal coalition agreements and will put forward its own candidates for mayoral positions.

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Mashaba says they don’t understand the DA’s position.

“They are going to be voting for their own Mayors in Johannesburg and Tshwane, completely moving away from the negotiations. That has really taken us by surprise, so all the parties were interviewed and we responded expressing our concerns on the manner the negotiations were going. We are still disappointed up to now,” says Mashaba.

Responding to the collapse of the talks with ActionSA, DA Federal Council leader Helen Zille says they won’t repeat the same mistake they did in 2016 in supporting Mashaba for mayorship.

“Herman Mashaba essentially relied on the EFF to stay in power and bent to every whim of the EFF when he was the DA Mayor and so it’s got nothing to do with personal animosity, it’s got everything to do with experience, having learnt from a very bad experience in 2016 and not wanting to repeat that experience,” says Zille.

The DA campaigned hard to unite the opposition vote, beat the ANC and fix broken municipalities, as we have in places we govern all over SA. Voters who split the opposition vote between scores of tiny parties (some of which have now Joined the ANC) should not blame the DA now.

— Helen Zille (@helenzille) November 22, 2021

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