Negotiations collapse between Joburg coalition, PA as Phalatse fights to keep mayoral chain

The PA said it would only support the DA-led coalition if it’s given access to the city’s finances through the economic and infrastructure development portfolios.

Mayor Mpho Phalatse is facing motions of confidence brought by the ATM, AIC and Al-Jama-ah, in what is the third attempt to oust her since she took office in November 2021.

“Mayor Mpho Phalatse has made it clear that we (the DA) will not hand over the hard-earned taxes paid by the people of Joburg to a party that has patronage extraction as is its goal,” said DA national spokesperson Cilliers Brink in response to the PA.

“Our concern over this possibility only intensified as negotiations progressed, with Gayton McKenzie repeatedly making it clear that his party has no interest in principled governance and exists solely to leverage and abuse any power it obtains to extract corrupt rents.

“As a result, the current round of negotiations were characterised by the PA’s constant extortionist tactics, apparently designed to play the coalition off against the ANC to get a better deal for itself.”

This while Action SA’s Michael Beaumont warned the coalition would go into the motions without a majority.

“Final coalition negotiations between the PA and the governing coalition in the City Johannesburg have failed, and as a result, the multi-party coalition will today face motions of no confidence without the majority to defend Mayor Mpho Phalatse. The DA refused to listen to the opinions of all of its coalition partners who wrote to the DA urging that the original proposal that had been agreed to by all parties (including the DA) and accepted by the PA, should be honoured.

“This proposal would have restored the majority of the coalition and defeated these motions of no confidence. We will reach out to our other coalition partners and seek their support for an ActionSA candidate to stand for mayor. We will do so because the failure of the DA to lead this multi-party coalition requires another political party to step forward to try and keep the ANC out.”

Patriotic Alliance leader Gayton Mckenzie also blamed the DA’s uncompromising stance for collapsing any possible agreement.

“They want to tell us a sovran independent party what to do. They came to us, we didn’t come to them. They said we want you to be part of this coalition. We said; ‘well put to us an offer’. ActionSA and everybody gave us an offer if we agreed to the offer we would have voted with them today.

“They then came back and said no we can't give the garden boys that type of  offer and they come back to us and said you will take that one, and I said you are playing we are different kinds of blacks, not the kind of blacks that you are used too, and we came back and we made another deal. Last night at around midnight they gave us another offer and we basically told them to go to hell.”

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