After holding the mayoral office in the City of Tshwane since March 2023, Cilliers Brink lost his mayoral chain by a vote of 120 councillors in a council sitting on September 26, with 87 councillors opposing the motion of no confidence against him. Picture: Oupa Mokoena/Independent Newspapers
NKOSIKHULULE NYEMBEZI
In scary-enough circumstances, stability can be one of the most appealing words in politics. When a municipality has had years of political and economic chaos, as Tshwane has, who does not want life to be more stable?
More consistency in the provision of public services, in people’s incomes, in the behaviour of political parties in the coalition governments – things taken for granted in calmer times – becomes something which voters yearn for and which ambitious politicians promise each time they justify sponsoring a vote of no-confidence.
So far, ANC’s leadership has carried out a long and sometimes ruthless exercise in creating and offering stability: for the party after the turmoil under successive regional and provincial leaders, for the municipality after the collapsing governance of the successive ANC and the DA coalitions, which most observers expect to continue after the election of the next mayor because of the unsolid, unmethodical, unchanging personalities driving the process.
If that happens, the public concern about elusive relief may be more widespread and politically potent than the ANC’s still underwhelming guarantees that it is doing the right thing by sidelining some smaller parties.
Incompetence in governance can seem an abstract and not very compelling quality until you experience it.
After this latest vote of no-confidence, there may be a sense for many voters of waking up from a long nightmare. The shocks and disasters in municipalities across the province since the last local government elections have been so relentless that if a Panyaza Lesufi premiership can bring this sometimes frightening time to an end or even slightly reduce the chaos for significant periods, then the bulk of the population who prefer not to think about politics may be quietly grateful.
Citizens should not have any illusions about the nature of the coalition offered by the ANC. Some political parties may like stability some of the time. However, factional politics thrive in a system with instability at its heart: the constant churn of political loyalties, the starkly diverging outcomes of promoting personal interests above the public good, the creation of winners and losers, the roller-coaster of boom and bust control of the public purse for personal gain.
When politicians say they want a stable government, what they leave unsaid is that they want it to act as a political and social buffer so that they can carry on chasing their destabilising but profitable goals.
When their party’s political strategies fail on a dangerous scale, they expect the citizens to bail them out by tolerating a string of no-confidence votes to prevent the political disorder from destroying their parties and spreading into everyday life.
Yet they are supposed to devise and commit to innovative means of working together as mandated by the electoral outcome that promotes coalitions.
Yet even if the ANC does manage to establish itself properly in Tshwane again, the pursuit of stability could still become a trap in Tshwane and other municipalities and the provincial government.
A stable society is often one that is not changing. South Africa has become hugely unequal, and there will be enormous pressure from some elites on any municipal or provincial government to keep their privileges intact.
There is speculation on the identity of the powerful drivers of last week’s events.
After holding the mayoral office in the City of Tshwane since March 2023, Brink lost his mayoral chain by a vote of 120 councillors in a council sitting on September 26, with 87 councillors opposing the motion of no confidence against him.
How else can we understand Lesufi’s rebuttal of those claims, telling Helen Zille there are not two ANCs and that “the decision to support the motion of no confidence was taken by the national working committee of the ANC”, and also that “the decision not to incorporate the DA into the Gauteng government of provincial unity was also taken by the national leadership of the ANC”?
* Nyembezi is a policy analyst, researcher and human rights activist.
Cape Times