Michael Beaumont
Pretoria - History provides leaders with moments in time which are either make or break and these moments are reflected upon later as either turning points for a country or missed opportunities.
Despite it being a local municipal council, one should not underestimate how the coming days in Johannesburg will be one of those moments for the DA and John Steenhuisen.
This moment follows the rather disappointing news over the weekend that the DA will not form a coalition (with the parties that previously elected Mpho Phalatse) citing their historical distrust of the PA. The consequence of this DA position is the continuation of ANC and EFF governance in Johannesburg.
On one level this is bad news for residents of Johannesburg who face the prospect of three more years of a single seat party ANC and EFF compromise mayor who lacks a coherent vision to address the complex problems that face residents in Johannesburg today. However, this itself does not constitute a national historical moment for change.
What defines the national significance of this moment is that Steenhuisen himself has announced this initiative of this Moonshot Pact – a project to bring together all parties to provide a multi-party alternative to what the DA has described as the doomsday scenario of an ANC/EFF government in 2024. Allow me to explain.
The moonshot pact was announced as a DA project with leaders told in a speech by Steenhuisen to watch their email in boxes. In attempting to appropriate the project as a DA initiative a weight of expectation has been placed by the DA on the DA for the project to succeed because of their leadership and not in spite of it. Any failure of this project to succeed that can be linked back to poor DA decision-making will be worn around the DA’s necks all through the election campaign.
The other reason why this moment gains greater historical gravity is because of Steenhuisen’s frankly impressive display of magnanimity in announcing the moonshot pact and with all the right noises being made about collaboration. He even went on to say to those leaders who had refused to join the discussions for a moonshot pact, “unclench your fists so that we can take hands and work together.”
So here we are, two weeks later and the DA’s coalition partners are having to ask them to unclench the fists of their councillors in Johannesburg so that they can raise them to vote out the ANC and EFF on Tuesday. This is the moment of great significance of which I have spoken.
If the hands of the DA go up to support the removal of the ANC and EFF on Tuesday, and if they proceed to work with other parties to support an alternative government, that moment of history would have been seized upon and victory will have been snatched from defeat even if it was originally snatched from victory. It will build confidence in the prospects of a national coalition alternative and do not underestimate for one moment the significance of the race for Gauteng in 2024. It will allow for three years of local government stability that can start turning the corner on serious challenges and place the instability of the past 18 months in the rear-view mirror.
Success will beget success if this week in Joburg provides momentum for national talks to begin for the moonshot pact with parties keen to protect these hard fought gains by making progress nationally. It will allow the baggage of local government coalitions to be left at the proverbial door and to focus on providing a strong national and provincial platform of solutions that can give South Africans cause to hope against the endless grind of joblessness, crime, economic despair, load shedding and corruption.
On the other hand, the wrong choice by the DA would take the form of their abstaining in the motion of no confidence or not supporting the coalition alternative that may replace it. This would see the ANC and EFF retaining power in Joburg through whatever proxy one-seat party they believe they can use to front their backdoor activities.
The most severe consequence of this decision is to shoot holes in the credibility of the moonshot pact. After all, how can the call for South Africans to take this pact seriously if moments after its announcement the party that announced the initiative solely causes the very outcome the pact seeks to prevent – an ANC and EFF government? Can South Africans really believe in the prospect of a moonshot pact that will achieve 51% in 2024 if the membership of such a pact will be a guarded and exclusive DA country club of people who have not erred in the past?
Could the DA even meet such a standard given that this is the second time they are rejecting a proposal to bring the PA back into Joburg with the direct knowledge that doing so would guarantee the continuation of ANC and EFF governance? These are all questions that float in the ether this week in Johannesburg.
The ANC and EFF in government, albeit through a proxy Mayor, will almost certainly see Joburg as the cash cow that can be milked to fund a desperate bid to retain Gauteng in 2024. Look no further to utterances arising from the ANC’s NEC held last weekend in which concerns for ANC collusion in EFF corruption were raised.
All of this is precisely why ActionSA has joined hands with other parties of our coalition and urged the DA to change their intended approach to events in Joburg this week. The usual vitriol and attacks have been demonstrably absent as we seek to guide the DA to appreciate the gravity of their decisions. If the bona fides of Steenhuisen and the moonshot pact are to be believed, there can be no option other than to see these events as that historical moment of origin in which the opportunity to fix our country all began.
* Beaumont is ActionSA national chairperson
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.
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