ANCYL tells Ramaphosa to fire DA ministers and let the EFF in

The ANC Youth League has called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to remove every DA minister from Cabinet and to reopen talks with other parties about who sits in the Government of National Unity.

Its president, Collen Malatji, made the call at a media briefing at Luthuli House in Johannesburg on Thursday, according to IOL, which reported the briefing on 16 October. Malatji said the league had backed working with the DA at the start and had been wrong to expect stability from it.

“We thought in the beginning of the Youth League that working with the second-biggest political party in South Africa would create a bit of stability in the government of national unity,” he said. “And you know, when we are wrong, you must say that we are wrong.”

He accused the DA of creating instability inside the GNU and of pursuing what he called a racist agenda, and said the party was undermining black leadership. “Now we are calling upon the GNU, the president (Cyril Ramaphosa), to immediately remove all ministers of the DA,” he said. “And we are calling upon the president to reopen discussions with other political parties.”

On the EFF, Malatji held out a conditional door. “If they can warm up and behave, they can come and join the government of national unity,” he said, adding that the party was “mainly led by childish people”.

He also renewed his criticism of Capitec Bank over donations to the DA by companies linked to the bank’s founder, Michiel Le Roux, and repeated a call for a public boycott. Le Roux has denied that Capitec funds the DA, saying the donations came from his other companies, Fynbos Ekwiteit and Fynbos Kapital. Those companies gave R15 million to the DA in 2022, and the party’s August 2023 donation disclosure recorded a further contribution from the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, a German organisation.

Malatji’s demand lands in the middle of a public fight between the two governing parties over the November 4 local government elections. The ANC went to the Constitutional Court to get 181 of its candidates back onto the ballot after they were excluded, and the court directed the Electoral Commission of South Africa to include them.

The DA’s answer came from its spokesperson, Karabo Khakhau, who on Thursday criticised ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula’s call for a review of the DA’s role in the GNU. Khakhau said the ANC was threatening its coalition partners instead of owning its failure to submit candidate nominations on time. She compared Mbalula’s position to a bitter husband who refuses to be held accountable and threatens divorce the moment he is.

For voters, the practical question is unchanged by the briefing. The 181 candidates are on the ballot for 4 November following the court’s direction, and the GNU’s composition is a decision for the president, not the Youth League. What Malatji has done is put the league’s weight behind the argument that the arrangement with the DA should end, and set a public condition on the EFF’s entry.