ANC and ActionSA's relationship in City of Johannesburg heads for the rocks

Eight months after forming a “conditional” partnership with ActionSA in the City of Johannesburg, the ANC has called a meeting to discuss ending the alliance after ActionSA on Thursday voted against the city’s adjustment budget.

The city increased its total revenue by R1.2-billion in its budget of more than R77-billion.

The budget passed after 138 councillors from the ANC, EFF, UDM, IFP and ATM voted in favor of it, while 105 councillors from DA, ActionSA and ACDP voted against it. This was the second attempt to pass the budget — it failed to pass in February because of political infighting.

The main reason ActionSA voted against the adjustment budget was the implementation of a R230 surcharge fee for electricity users. ActionSA has called for the fee to be either scrapped or reduced by R100, a request which the ANC failed to back.

Read more: Johannesburg’s indigent households set to be hammered with massive electricity price increases

Last year, ActionSA wrote to Dada Morero, who was the finance MMC at the time but has since been elected mayor, asking him to establish a task team and work towards reducing the surcharge in the mid-term budget.

On 10 July 2024, Morero said the city would review the fee.

“We are willing to enter a process to look at this availability charge and its impact on residents, and undergo a process to review this amount,” Daily Maverick reported.

Read more: Food or electricity — power tax forces a cruel choice on Joburg’s poorest people

However, on Thursday, ActionSA’s chief whip in the Johannesburg council, Zark Lebatlang, said this was just talk.

“Between last year and now, the ANC has simply refused to commit to any of our proposals and they have said … if we are not voting with them, so be it,” said Lebatlang. 

The city’s chair of chairs, ANC councillor Sithembiso Zungu, said: “Today we are disappointed with how ActionSA decided to do things. We are actually not surprised because they … wrote us letters that they are not happy with a lot of things.

“A decision needs to be taken on how we move forward with ActionSA. We have no confidence in them any more. We are not happy with them and after this council we are going to sit down and … reconsider our relationship with ActionSA.”

Should the multiparty government decide to boot ActionSA from the coalition, the speaker, Nobuhle Mthembu, would be removed from the position through a motion of no confidence that is likely to pass as the multiparty government has 138 seats in the 270-seat council.

Read more: Battleground Joburg: ActionSA and ANC work in mysterious ways

Holding the executive accountable

Lebatlang said: “We can’t deal with political negotiations through the grapevine. If the ANC and its coalition partners feel that because ActionSA rejected the adjustment budget, it’s up to them if they want to table a motion of no confidence against the speaker or remove our chairpersons, but our position is that we are not going to support anything that is anti-poor, that is going to affect the residents with all the problems that Joburg is already facing.

“We will remain in our positions because we feel like we have been holding the executive accountable.”

ATM councillor Lubabalo Magwentshu is among those in the coalition who are unhappy with how ActionSA has handled the disagreement over the surcharge.

Magwentshu said that while his party was also opposed to the surcharge, the multiparty government was constrained by the law.

“We [ATM] also are against the surcharge, [but] if we were to scrap or amend it now, we would be breaking the law.”

He added there was willingness to rectify it by the end of the financial year.

UDM councillor Yongama Zigebe was also critical of ActionSA’s decision and a protest its members held outside the council chambers during the meeting.

“Speaker, it is deeply concerning that ActionSA continues to mislead the public with political gimmicks, using the adjustment budget to create a false narrative that they are fighting for residents, when in fact, they are simply playing cheap politics. Their grandstanding on the R230 surcharge is not only dishonest but also exposes their lack of understanding of legislative processes.

“If ActionSA had truly read and understood municipal financial legislation, they would know that tariffs, including the surcharge, cannot be removed or decreased during the adjustment budget,” said Zigebe.

Read more: Johannesburg’s collapse, capture, corruption is a national risk, President to hear

The political ructions came six days after President Cyril Ramaphosa visited Johannesburg as part of government intervention to assess plans to arrest service delivery decline.

During the visit, Ramaphosa expressed concern about the state of the city.

He later announced the establishment of a presidential working group to deal with Johannesburg’s many challenges, including water shortages, long outages due to old infrastructure, and a large housing backlog. The city also struggles with crime, unemployment, potholes and frequent power cuts. DM