ActionSA’s campaign against Helen Zille is putting personal grievances ahead of the interests of Johannesburg. The DA should not abandon its own candidate-selection process to accommodate a smaller coalition partner, particularly when the city can least afford another unstable administration.
There is something deeply unserious about the direction of Johannesburg’s coalition negotiations. South Africa’s economic capital is in desperate need of political stability, competent leadership and a government capable of restoring confidence in the city. Instead, politicians are turning what should be a serious discussion about governance into a contest of personalities.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) emerged from the 4 November local government elections as the largest party in Johannesburg, winning 91 of the city’s 270 council seats. The ANC secured 63, while ActionSA came third with 43. No party has an outright majority, making coalition government unavoidable.
Yet ActionSA has made one thing abundantly clear: it does not want Helen Zille as mayor.
That position deserves considerably more scrutiny than it has received. Not least because South Africa now has several years of evidence demonstrating just how fragile coalition governments become when they are constructed around excluding the largest party.
The warning from MISTRA
The Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) has spent more than four years examining South Africa’s emerging coalition landscape. Its 2026 Coalitions Barometer, released in October, provides a substantial empirical examination of coalition administrations following the November 2021 local government elections, tracking their performance through February 2026.
One of its most striking findings is that coalition administrations which exclude the party with the largest number of seats collapse at approximately four times the rate of those which include it.
Of the 55 administrations that governed without the largest party, 37 collapsed. By comparison, only 21 of the 120 administrations which included the largest party collapsed.
Put differently, approximately 67% of administrations excluding the largest party collapsed, compared with 17.5% of those which included it.
These numbers should concern anyone who takes Johannesburg’s future seriously.
MISTRA’s research also found that the problem was not confined to a particular political party. Whether the excluded party was the ANC, the DA or the Inkatha Freedom Party, the pattern remained. The issue was the exclusion of the party with the largest electoral mandate.
There is a reason for this. Coalitions assembled primarily to keep the largest party out of government are inherently vulnerable. Their members are united by opposition to another party rather than a common governing programme. They must continually manage competing political interests while the excluded party retains both a substantial electoral base and an incentive to bring the administration down.
Consider another of MISTRA’s findings: of 31 anti-plurality coalitions that were replaced by another coalition, 29 were replaced by administrations led by the very party that had initially been excluded.
The lesson is difficult to miss. Excluding the largest party does not necessarily prevent it from governing. It often delays the inevitable while subjecting residents to another period of political instability.
Johannesburg has already experienced six different administrations during the period covered by the research. It cannot afford another government whose foundations are built on political exclusion and personal grievances.
ActionSA’s political brinkmanship
Against this background, ActionSA’s approach to the DA is difficult to defend.
Its opposition to Zille has become a central feature of coalition negotiations. Michael Beaumont, ActionSA’s national chairperson, has made clear that the party’s objection is not to the DA itself, but to Zille. Herman Mashaba has taken the matter further, proposing that both he and Zille withdraw their mayoral ambitions so that another DA candidate can be put forward.
In effect, ActionSA is prepared to entertain a coalition with Johannesburg’s largest party, provided that the DA removes the candidate it has already selected.
There is something rather shameless about this approach.
ActionSA has every right to oppose Zille. It can refuse to support her mayoralty and negotiate for a different arrangement. That is coalition politics. But it cannot reasonably expect the DA to treat its own internal processes as disposable whenever another party takes issue with its chosen candidate.
The DA won 91 seats. ActionSA won 43. The two parties together would command 134 seats, still two short of the 136 required for a majority. ActionSA is an important coalition partner, but it is not the dominant party in this relationship. Its electoral mandate does not give it the authority to dictate the DA’s internal affairs.
There is a fundamental difference between negotiating a coalition agreement and attempting to control another party’s candidate-selection process.
ActionSA’s position also raises a more troubling question: what exactly is the precedent the DA would be setting by giving in?
DA must stand by its own processes
Zille did not simply arrive at the DA’s mayoral candidacy through an informal arrangement or an appointment by senior party figures.
The selection process involved candidate assessments, psychometric testing, interviews and a system of scoring and ranking. Gauteng DA leader Solly Msimanga publicly explained that Zille had emerged from a competitive process in which other candidates, including Johannesburg caucus leader Belinda Kayser-Echeozonjoku, were considered.
In other words, the party put candidates through its established processes and selected Zille.
What would it say about the DA’s internal democracy if that decision were now reversed because ActionSA threatened to withhold its support?
Political parties cannot expect members to participate in internal democratic processes, put themselves forward for public office and accept the outcome, only to discard that outcome when a coalition partner objects.
It would send a damaging message to every DA member who participates in the party’s internal structures. Their efforts and the party’s own procedures would ultimately count for less than the demands of another political organisation.
It would also create a dangerous precedent for future coalition negotiations. Smaller parties would learn that the quickest route to influence over a larger party is not necessarily through electoral support or policy negotiations, but through threatening to withhold coalition backing until the larger party changes its internal decisions.
The DA should not encourage this behaviour.
There is also the matter of Zille’s seniority within the party. She is one of the most experienced and influential political figures in the DA’s history. She led the party from 2007 to 2015, served as Mayor of Cape Town and Premier of the Western Cape, and has occupied senior positions within the party for years.
The DA should have the institutional confidence to stand behind a candidate who has emerged through its own selection process. It should not behave as though ActionSA’s approval is more important than the decisions of its own structures.
Johannesburg needs experience, not political experiments
The argument for Zille is not simply that she is the DA’s chosen candidate. It is that she brings decades of political and executive experience to a city in desperate need of effective leadership.
Her record as Mayor of Cape Town and Premier of the Western Cape is well established. During her mayoralty, Cape Town undertook significant administrative and financial reforms aimed at reversing deteriorating municipal performance. These reforms were subsequently documented in a Princeton University case study examining the city’s institutional turnaround.
As Premier, she presided over a provincial administration that achieved substantial improvements in audit performance. By 2018/19, 83% of provincial departments and entities received clean audits, the highest proportion of any province.
Johannesburg is a different city with different challenges. Nobody should pretend that the Cape Town governance model can simply be transplanted into Gauteng. But Zille’s experience in managing large political and administrative institutions is precisely why her candidacy deserves serious consideration.
Johannesburg is not a municipality where a political party should be experimenting with inexperienced leadership or making appointments to satisfy coalition partners.
The city’s problems are enormous. Research by the Centre for Development and Enterprise in 2026 highlights R71.8 billion in gross unpaid consumer bills and an approximately 50% decline in real infrastructure investment over the preceding decade.
Johannesburg is home to the country’s largest formal employment base, accounting for approximately 1.82 million jobs, or 16.3% of national formal employment, according to National Treasury’s Cities Economic Outlook 2026.
The city’s fortunes matter far beyond its municipal boundaries. Its businesses, property market, financial services industry, transport networks and infrastructure are central to the national economy.
When Johannesburg deteriorates, South Africa pays the price.
The next mayor needs to focus on restoring the city’s finances, improving revenue collection, maintaining infrastructure, rebuilding administrative capacity and creating an environment in which businesses can invest and employ people. These are the issues that should dominate coalition negotiations.
Instead, we are spending time debating whether one politician is sufficiently agreeable to another.
Being difficult to work with is not a disqualification
Much has been made of Zille’s personality. ActionSA has complained about her management style, and Mashaba has been particularly vocal about his disagreements with her. Lukhona Mnguni has also remarked on the tensions between Zille and Mashaba, describing how putting the two in the same room has resulted in chaos.
Let us address this directly.
Even if every criticism of Zille’s temperament were true, it would not change the fundamental question: who is best equipped to govern Johannesburg?
Are we now selecting mayors according to whether other politicians find them pleasant to work with?
I would rather have a demanding mayor who insists on performance, confronts incompetence and holds people accountable than one who makes everyone comfortable while the city continues to deteriorate.
Political leadership is not a popularity contest. Coalition government requires compromise, but compromise is not the same as allowing personal relationships to determine who holds public office.
Politicians are elected to serve residents, not to protect one another from difficult personalities.
There is also no reason to believe that removing Zille would magically resolve the differences between the parties. ActionSA and the DA have competing interests, different political constituencies and disagreements that go well beyond one individual. Those tensions will not disappear because the DA appoints somebody else.
If the parties cannot develop a working relationship with Zille, they need to explain why they cannot put their differences aside in the interests of Johannesburg. That is their responsibility as political leaders.
The city does not exist to accommodate their egos.
Put governance ahead of egos
There is a perfectly reasonable way forward. ActionSA should negotiate for meaningful representation, policy commitments and oversight mechanisms. The parties should agree on a credible programme for financial recovery, infrastructure investment, service delivery, procurement reform and administrative accountability.
They should establish clear mechanisms for resolving disputes and ensure that coalition partners are held accountable for their responsibilities.
That is what serious coalition negotiations look like.
MISTRA’s research should have made one thing abundantly clear: coalition governments are not strengthened by treating the largest party as an obstacle to be overcome. They are strengthened by recognising electoral realities and building arrangements capable of surviving political disagreements.
The DA, for its part, must resist the temptation to sacrifice its own institutional credibility to secure ActionSA’s approval. It has conducted a selection process, selected a candidate and emerged as the largest party in Johannesburg. Unless its own structures have compelling reasons to reconsider that decision, it should stand by it.
ActionSA is free to reject Zille. It is not entitled to make the DA’s internal democracy contingent on its approval.
Johannesburg has suffered enough from politicians who place their ambitions above the interests of residents. Its economic importance, institutional deterioration and repeated changes in political leadership demand a different standard of political conduct.
Helen Zille will not be everybody’s preferred politician. That is hardly the point. She has substantial executive experience, has emerged from her party’s selection process and represents the candidate of the largest party in the city.
Those facts should matter more than whether Herman Mashaba likes working with her.
The people of Johannesburg cannot afford another administration built around personal rivalries. Their jobs, businesses, property values and livelihoods are tied to the functioning of this city. They need politicians who understand that responsibility.
The DA should stand by its candidate. ActionSA should negotiate on the issues that matter. And both parties should remember that Johannesburg is not their personal playground.
It is South Africa’s economic lifeblood. It deserves better than politics by vendetta.
[Image: Clodagh Da Paixao on Unsplash]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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