'Coalitions have not rewarded our people': Mbalula reiterates that ANC is not interested in coalitions

ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has reiterated that the party is not looking at entering into coalitions, saying several parties are approaching the ANC to propose working together after the May 29 elections.

Mbalula said there was excitement about the prospect of the ANC dipping below 50% and this has given some parties the courage to publicly say they would be willing to get into bed with the governing party.

He, however, said such excitement was misplaced as the ANC was confident it would win the national and provincial elections.

“They are all talking about coalitions, ‘if ANC drops below 50% we are here, I’m prepared to work with you’. They are saying we will be out of power. It’s fine, now they want themselves beside us, they are greeting us at night when we can’t see them saying we are going to coalitions,” said Mbalula.

“There is no coalition that is going to happen here. We are saying discard that water, there's no chicken that’s going to be plucked here.”

Mbalula was speaking at an event commemorating Chris Hani’s assassination in Ekurhuleni on Wednesday.

He said it would be wrong to say the ANC has not done anything for South Africans in the past 30 years and that the electorate would not allow themselves to be fooled by such statements from the opposition.

“We have never won elections on a silver platter, we win elections by working hard, in the next 50 days one person to a person. Save our people, they are being misled, let’s go to people and stop talking to ourselves,” said Mbalula.

He said the ANC was not interested in coalitions because they had not served South Africans well at the local government level.

Instead, coalitions  have had led to potholes and delayed service delivery among other problems because no single party was responsible in many municipalities, including the metropolitan areas in Gauteng and elsewhere, he said.

Revolving mayoral doors were also not helping, as this has taken away focus from the delivery of critical services.

“Coalitions have not rewarded our people but coalitions are a product of an election and we must blame it on ourselves for not going out to talk to our people. So let us go out to our people,” he said.

Mbalula bemoaned how coalitions have given even the smallest political parties power to decide the fate of municipalities, including elections of mayors and speakers.

He described it as a “travesty of justice” that the ANC was the largest party in Ekurhuleni but was not in power.

Instead, the ANC had to go out with a begging bowl asking other political parties to hand it the mayoral chains and they were refusing.

The Ekurhuleni metropolitan municipality is expected to elect a new mayor with the ANC eyeing the position.

But its rocky relationship with the EFF in Gauteng municipalities has so far been based on an agreement that neither the ANC nor the red berets get the mayoral positions.

They have been electing mayors from smaller parties while sharing the spoils on the MMC positions.

“Our councillors must live among our people. We cannot lose power. Here in Ekurhuleni we’ve got 78 wards out of 112, it is 70% but the government is not controlled by us. We go begging everyone even the ones in red overalls (EFF). Now we are debating who the mayor should be but we are in the majority. We must now go beg people to give us mayorship and they refuse. We must now beg even a person who doesn’t control a single ward to give us mayorship,” said Mbalula.

“You know why, travesty of justice. You are controlling 70 constituencies that you are servicing, the people in those constituencies want ANC service delivery but you don’t control the power to service those people and they don’t understand why. Because there in council the power that you’re supposed to have legitimately is not in your hands, so you go around asking for it in corridors because our people did not come out and vote in their numbers.

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