Why the NEC should be cautious about who becomes the Mayor of TSHWANE

The edited version was published in TimesLive on 28th September 2024

The DA is factually removed as the face or head of the capital city's executive authority. The tyranny of no absolute majority power has reared its head again in Tshwane. The power interregnum will last as long as the political bickering for who should lead continues. With the GNU configurations, expectations of the DA must-go coalitions, and the real need for the political stability of the capital city, the outcome of the new coalition negotiations might yield completely unexpected permutations of who ultimately governs Tshwane. 

It is not a secret that the NEC harboured some discomforts about this specific regime change in Tshwane. Previous attempts at taking over the administration of Tshwane from the DA, including the failed Section 139 intervention, were pre-GNU indications of the Gauteng Provincial Government's deep-seated discontent with political power configurations in the Capital City. 

The contest governing the capital city has gained momentum with the two pre-GNU nodes and sworn political adversaries, the ANC and DA. To the DA, which regards its occupation of the Capital City's mayoral seat as a symbolic and hegemonic victory, leading the city has always been an opportunity to showcase its government capability to Africa's largest concentration of diplomats. Tshwane would have added Cape Town and the Western Cape as flagship jurisdictions, demonstrating its governance prowess at any level. 

To the ANC, and acutely the Gauteng PEC, which sees the continued government of Tshwane by the DA as a symbol of the tyranny of being governed by a majority of minorities while you command a large majority. The loss of hegemony over the Capital City would always evoke emotions of a symbolic loss of political power in any political power contestation. The last of the fortresses in any contest, including war as the ultimate, is the Capital City. Failure to control it as a jurisdiction signifies a path towards defeat. Compounding this, and lately, is how this has violated the GNU principle that the party with the majority of votes forms a government. Leading Tshwane is an opportunity for the ANC to reclaim the political power it lost in the 2024 national elections. 

With a collapsed DA-led coalition and a new Tshwane-dominated governing coalition emerging, notwithstanding the reality of a GNU arrangement firmament, what comes next is a logical question. The pending decision of who should be the next mayor raises questions about the issues the ANC NEC should factor into its decision grid. 

Firstly, Tshwane is the executive capital city of South Africa. It hosts the most significant number of embassies and consulates than any other city in the continent. It is the potential seat of any African Consensus on global matters if this potential were to be explored by the political establishment. The governance of Tshwane should, at its worst, be the best that Africa can display to the world. This requires the city's political and administrative leadership to understand the sophisticated character of Pretoria's role in the global scheme of things. 

The elephant-sized question in the room is to what extent the would-be replacement of the DA Mayor meets the grossly unattended city responsibility to be the lifestyle host of RSA hegemony over international relations. If the NEC desires regime change, strategic consideration of who it deploys is obligatory without the Thoko-Didisation of the 2026 local government elections. 

In the emerging political circumstances, the 'no Sputla, no Vote' movement will be opportunistically grabbed by the MK Party, which is lying in wait to scavenge casualties of a battle for the leadership of Tshwane within the ANC. 

Secondly, if the inputs of former President Mbeki at the Gauteng breakaway session to consider renewal options where he was brazen in decrying the absence of leadership required in the ANC to manage new complex governance situations like being a Mayor of Africa's leading economy's Capital City, were to be taken to a logical conclusion. In that case, changing the mayoral chains in Tshwane requires a reconfigured leader of society brigade commensurate with what the provincial leadership advanced it will be working on. 

Allegations of collusion between the water tanks mafias, the construction mafias, and other sorts of extortion syndicates with the regional political centre of the ANC should be followed up, investigated, disproved, and debunked as a commitment to demonstrate the ANC NEC's seriousness about the restoration of the ANC's integrity with Tshwane voters. The conversations inside the taxis and buses every morning, at funerals after burials, and many other non-organised community gatherings, including churches, should be managed after the regime change decision. The bigger question is, who then will take on the Mayoral Chains?

Thirdly, the financial viability of the city, which is an outcome of a multiyear mix of economic decisions that hallowed out the fiscal capacity of the city to breathe beyond its operational budgets, is a risk the ANC should take with a clear view of how it will explain current resource-constraints-based service delivery failures, come 2026. Any further decline of the ANC in South Africa's metropoles will only bode well for its possible recovery in 2029 if it enters into an election pact to survive the total loss of power with current and future GNU partners. 

The difficult-to-airbrush reality of a city bureaucracy transitioning from being deployed to being commissioned into the service of "we the people" is a strategic consideration that the ANC NEC should consider in dealing with this matter. Tshwane society is aware of the true nature of the city's leadership and management challenges. People want water, lights, and the bread of the ANC. 

Fourthly, the difficult-to-airbrush MK Party reality as a strategic node for building an alternative, however correct or otherwise, remains a threat the ANC should manage. It would have been politically prudent for the regime change decision, if indeed it was urgent and necessary, to have been preceded by a consultative process with key stakeholders within the ANC's complex of allies and complementary contemporaries such as organised business, organised faith-based organisations, and its veteran's community. Given who becomes the Mayor interregnum, insights from consultations can still be factored into the decision grid. 

After dealing with the above, the ANC should consider returning to the centre its earlier decision to treat the leadership of Metropolitan Municipalities as a National Executive Committee matter. It was correct to make the appointment of Metro Mayors a NEC competence. What might have been a challenge was to ignore the centrality of defining criteria to do that. At worst, the Mayors of Metropolitan Municipalities must have ex-officio status in the PEC, NEC, and REC. Even if being REC members would be a political advantage, they shouldn't necessarily be elected REC members, should competence and capability exist at that level. What should be mandatory is for the REC leadership to be in charge of the whippery and speakership of the Metro. 

The mandate to govern belongs to the ANC as a whole, and the wholeness of its skill set must be factored across the spheres of government. The executive authority of the local state should start preoccupying the decision grid of the ANC. The lost political power started to erode first in local government, and Gauteng is accused number one in the dock if the ANC were to conduct a true trial of what happened here. 

Governing a city as diverse and cosmopolitan as Tshwane requires multi-frame thinking that goes beyond narrow regional party preferences and myopic leadership ambitions and embraces instead the pursuit of national interests in how the capital city is governed. Tshwane must be the city where the best experience of what South Africa is capable of being should be showcased. It is different from the specific buildings in the town that are national security key points; every street and person in TSHWANE must be a national reputation security key point. Poorly managed, a Tshwane broader than a political party-type coalition must be considered. The service delivery convulsions in the city, most of which are borne out of the challenges in politics, are sufficient to justify the NEC's direct involvement. The exiting of Brink and the GNU statement of intent introduces the local government dimension of the GNU where it matters. CUT!!!