Former mayor Mpho Phalatse shares lessons from Joburg’s most self-destructive coalition

Battles for power, an air of mistrust and factionalism within coalitions were discussed at the Friedrich Naumann Foundation’s Freedom Dialogue with former Johannesburg mayor Dr Mpho Phalatse and Daily Maverick senior journalist Queenin Masuabi on Wednesday, 6 March.

In a conversation moderated by Masuabi, Phalatse regaled a room of concerned citizens, members of civil society and political leaders with her experience of leading the largest coalition in the City of Johannesburg’s history and being the first female mayor of the metro.

The Friederich Nauman Foundation hosted a freedom dialogue about coalitions with Dr Mpho Phalatse and Daily Maverick senior journalist Queenin Masuabi on Wednesday, 6 March. (Photo: Supplied)

“Ideally, you need an administration that can be insulated from political instability. You need technocrats in the city to carry on the work of delivering services regardless of what is happening at the political level. Often, that’s not what happens,” Phalatse said.

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She was the executive mayor of Johannesburg in a DA-led coalition from November 2021 to January 2023. The coalition crashed and burned when Phalatse was ousted in a vote of no confidence on 26 January 2023, the second vote of no confidence that passed during her mayorship.

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Phalatse said her ousting served to highlight just how unstable coalition governments can be.

“A good example is when I was [first] ousted in September for 25 days,” Phalatse said.

“At the time, another mayor [the ANC’s Dada Morero] came in, but during a mayoral committee meeting, they received news that my ousting was illegal.”

Phalatse was reinstated, but the damage had already been done. When stepping down as mayor, Morero said to officials, “I’ll be back next week.”

“You put yourself in the shoes of those officials. So, a lot of officials started calculating what was likely to happen. He said he’d be back. [The ANC] has the numbers. [They] don’t see the DA and their partners having a strategy, so [they] … play it safe,” Phalatse said.

“Unfortunately, because of that, the city gets affected, service delivery gets affected, people start dragging their feet and there is sabotage.” 

Phalatse saw at first-hand how messy coalition politics can be and her experience begs the question: Is South Africa ready for a coalition government on the national level?

Multiple polls have projected that a national coalition may be in the future of South African politics after the general election on 29 May. That prospect comes with governance concerns after voters witnessed coalition after coalition crumble when political parties put power before the people.

“This is why it is important for us to continue these conversations around coalitions because this is what we’re potentially facing after May 29th — coalition government at provincial, and possibly, national level,” Masuabi said.

Hostile negotiations and worthless coalition agreements

Signs that the City of Johannesburg coalition was doomed were already evident long before Phalatse’s dramatic ousting. According to Phalatse, the DA’s road to building the coalition was fraught with mistrust, dishonesty and hostile negotiations. 

The DA went into the coalition negotiations that took place after the 2021 local elections expecting that because it won 71 seats, its voice would be the strongest in the coalition.

“This caused a lot of discontent from other parties. There was disagreement on whether our voices are the same irrespective of the number of seats we bring to the coalition.”

Despite the constant engagement, Phalatse said that on the day she was elected mayor, 22 November 2022, the DA had no coalition partner. 

“I recall that the morning of the press briefing when we were to announce the coalition … we actually had no coalition. We met online until very late at night, and we still ended up with no coalition. There were no agreements on which portfolios should go to the political parties.”  

Describing the negotiations as antagonistic, Phalatse said there was a lot of horse-trading and a coalition was finally formed, with the DA dominating.

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Masuabi highlighted concerns over political parties placing emphasis on what position each party would get rather than focusing on ensuring Johannesburg residents were served by the most qualified candidates.

Phalatse responded: “You are absolutely right. However, those initial negotiations were not really based on what position people were getting. But there was gross mistrust.

“So if, for instance, you have the mayorship and you don’t have the speaker’s position, you’re left in a vulnerable position. As you saw what played out, Vasco da Gama [from the DA] was ousted as speaker, and Colleen Makhubele [from Cope] came in. It was easy to oust me as mayor,” Phalatse said.

When crafting the coalition agreement, Phalatse said the party learnt from the DA-led coalition of 2016, which ultimately fell apart under Herman Mashaba, who was mayor at the time. The party drew up a coalition agreement ahead of the 2021 election, but “that agreement was not worth the paper it was written on. It was not enforceable. It had many gaps. A lot of the gaps we could discount if we were dealing with reasonable people,” Phalatse said.

She added that one issue with coalition agreements is that they are not legally binding and parties can walk away from them without recourse.

Trouble with ActionSA

Phalatse revealed that ActionSA, which won the third-largest number of votes in the 2021 election, emerged as a rival in the coalition government.

“The history between the DA and ActionSA is noteworthy and is not to be taken lightly. Herman Mashaba, the founder of ActionSA, was a DA mayor. When he left the Democratic Alliance, he was disgruntled. He felt he was pushed out of the DA.”

Phalatse recalled an incident at a Youth Day event when ActionSA held a demonstration just as she was set to give an address at the Hector Pieterson Memorial.

“At the time, we were already in coalition with ActionSA. Just at the time I was supposed to give my address, as is tradition every year, they surrounded the place and started singing and dancing for me not to give the address.”

Phalatse said she often felt undermined and unsupported by ActionSA in the coalition government, and that the party felt it had to disassociate itself from the “DA lite” moniker it had been given by the public.

“They needed to outdo the DA. They were not supportive of me as mayor and often undermined my authority. They did not allow me to do oversight over their work and did not really work well transversely with other portfolios outside of ActionSA. So, by far, they were the most difficult coalition partners to work with.”  

While the DA had fairly good working relationships with the IFP, FF+ and ACDP, which had portfolios in the coalition, there was heavy opposition from smaller parties like Cope, which made governing the metro difficult, she said.

ActionSA national chairperson Michael Beaumont told Daily Maverick Phalatse’s comments were “regrettable and revisionist, especially given that ActionSA did more to protect her mayoralty than her own party did.

“Like many in the DA, Dr Phalatse viewed the role of coalition partners [was] to cheerlead mediocrity unconditionally. 

“The truth is that the DA were the toughest opponents of Dr Phalatse’s tenure as mayor which, by all accounts, did not deliver any remarkable legacy to the residents of Johannesburg other than being short-lived and unstable.”

Beaumont referred to the dispute between ActionSA and the DA over the proposed appointment of Johann Mettler as city manager in 2022, noting that Phalatse had met him prior to his interview, risking the appointment being overturned in court. The DA at the time accused ActionSA of undermining its coalition partner.

"Phalatse calls this undermining, most would see this as good governance through coalition partners who hold one another to account," said Beaumont.

According to an amaBhungane report at the time, the then-mayor's spokesperson denied having a preferred candidate for the position.

"In order to get the most competitive field for the strongest city manager possible, Mpho's office reached out to many people besides Johann Mettler... There is nothing wrong with a meeting," a DA insider said.

Creating stability in coalitions

Despite her experience, Phalatse does believe there are ways to remedy the issues facing coalition governments.

She said the DA had invested in research and looked at best international practice in Denmark, Germany and Kenya, where coalition politics is already in play on the national level.

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The party had developed a private member’s bill that proposes five points.

The first was the introduction of a percentage threshold for every seat to ensure that smaller parties did not dominate negotiations. 

“Denmark has it, Germany has it, but we don’t have it here. That’s why Al Jama-ah has the mayorship of Johannesburg with three seats when the ANC has 91,” Phalatse said.

Second, the DA proposed ensuring that coalition agreements were enforceable and legally binding.  

“The third one is to have an independent registrar of political parties, who will be the secretary for coalition agreements, publicise them and hold political parties accountable. I think that’s a really good one,” said Phalatse. 

Fourth, “the Democratic Alliance has also proposed increasing the negotiation time between the election outcomes and the formation of government”.

Last, the DA wanted to reduce the frequency of motions of no confidence. Phalatse faced three failed motions of no confidence before she was finally ousted.

“There was a motion every month. There was no limit. It’s ridiculous and it doesn’t bode well for service delivery.”  

The ANC is working on developing a framework to better enable coalitions, which Phalatse said shared similarities with the DA’s proposals.

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“The question is, are [these frameworks] going to be as good as the paper they are written on, or are they just going to be another paper that they’re not able to implement at the end of the day?” Phalatse asked.

Thirty years of democracy

Reflecting on 30 years of democracy, Phalatse ruminated on what South Africa had in 1994 that it didn’t have now.

“Here’s what I see. We had unity as South Africans, but we have great fragmentation now. We had the Freedom Charter as a vision that we all bought into, but we also had leadership. We had elders.

“There was an ability to rally parties together and leaders of different groupings to say, how do we transition together without going into civil war, without going into chaos? We don’t have that kind of leadership, unfortunately, today. It’s every man for himself.”

She said that while South Africa had many different political parties, many of which differed ideologically, they were basically advocating the same policies and principles.

“I look forward to a time when we start to unify again and we start to consolidate.” DM