ANC wants Joburg outright, no coalition, says its mayoral candidate Masuku

The ANC is campaigning to govern the City of Johannesburg on its own, without a coalition, its Johannesburg mayoral candidate and regional chair Loyiso Masuku said on Wednesday, as voting day put the party’s ambitions for the metro on the line.

“We are expecting people to vote for the ANC and give the ANC an outright majority. We are not working to be in any coalition, we are working to govern the City of Johannesburg without a coalition,” Masuku said, as Sunday World reported on 4 November.

Masuku spoke at Hyde Park High School, where ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa cast his ballot with his wife and Dr Tshepo Mostepe. She voted earlier at Mulbarton Primary School.

Her argument against the arrangement the city has lived under is about time and stability. Coalitions, she said, hold up service delivery because both services and council negotiations take long, and the churn of incoming and outgoing mayors unsettles the administration. “Coalitions delay service delivery, they are a hindrance as everything (service delivery and council negotiations) takes long, which is not sustainable and destabilises administration pertaining to the incoming and outgoing of mayors,” she said.

The ANC’s Johannesburg branch currently shares power with ActionSA, the EFF, Al Jama-ah, the Patriotic Alliance and the IFP, an arrangement that followed the exit of former mayor Kabelo Gwamanda in 2024. That is the coalition record Masuku is asking voters to end.

She did not close the door on working with opposition parties. Should the ANC lose in the city, she said, it is prepared to co-exist with them. Any partner, she added, would have to subscribe to the party’s values and put coalition agreements in writing. “Our value system is clear, we are a non-racial and non-sexist, democratic organisation that believes that we must provide services for all. We want to make sure we deal with injustices of the past in our city, and basic service delivery is our core priority,” she said.

Asked whether she was confident of becoming mayor if the ANC leads Johannesburg, Masuku did not answer directly. She pointed instead to Ramaphosa’s campaigning for the party’s mayoral nominees and to the manifesto. “We (ANC) are led by President Cyril Ramaphosa who has been campaigning throughout the country for all mayoral nominees. All of us subscribe to the ANC’s manifesto, and we must implement the six areas that we have committed to in service delivery, economic growth, employment opportunities,” she said.

Masuku is one of three candidates shortlisted for the ANC’s Johannesburg mayoral ticket, alongside Frank Chikane and the current mayor, Dada Morero. The party is expected to reveal its candidates across the country’s municipalities after the voting period.

For Johannesburg residents, the question the campaign has put to them is narrow. A vote for the ANC is a vote, in Masuku’s telling, for a council that does not have to negotiate its way to every decision, in a metro where the last two years have been marked by exactly that negotiation.