East London – With both the DA and the ANC failing to win an outright majority in the Nelson Mandela Bay metro, both parties will have their work cut out in convincing smaller political parties to join them in a coalition.
The DA and the ANC each won 48 seats in the hotly contested metropolitan council, with 24 seats going to smaller parties. The two parties gained support of 39.9% and 39.4%, respectively.
There are 120 seats in the Nelson Mandela Bay council and to control the municipality, a political party needs to have 61 seats.
This means that the DA or the ANC will need 13 more seats from other political parties in order to form a government.
Nelson Mandela Bay has been plagued by instability in the past five years, following a coalition government that was initially led by DA.
With a support of 6.4%, the EFF became the third biggest political party in the metropolitan council with eight seats, followed by the Northern Alliance with three seats.
The Freedom Front Plus, ACDP, Patriotic Alliance and Defenders of the People each won two seats.
Abantu Integrity Movement, UDM, AIC, GOOD and the PAC each won one seat.
ANC provincial chairperson and Premier, Oscar Mabuyane, said this week the ANC was not “desperate” for coalition partners in the metro.
“We can be an opposition with maximum discipline. But there must be a government there. If we need to be in a coalition, we will be in a coalition with people who have the best interest of our people (in mind). We don’t have time to play politics, but we have time for development and a better life for our people,” Mabuyane said.
Speaking to Independent Media on Thursday, the ANC’s provincial head of elections, Mziwonke Ndabeni, said: “the coalition politics are going to be an ANC nationally-led process across all provinces. As a province, we are not going to talk to any political party.”
Even though the ANC dropped by two seats, compared to the 50 seats they attained in 2016, Ndabeni said they were “comfortable” with the results from the metro, the Eastern Cape’s economic capital.
“We will sit down and do the analysis of the results. In the next elections, we hope to win back the Nelson Mandela Bay,” Ndabeni said.
DA leader John Steenhuisen said the DA does not want to go into “unstable coalitions”.
“I will be looking into creating stable, solid coalitions that will be able to go the distance, and not fall apart from one council meeting to the next.
“Our lawyers have also spent the last two months on a draft agreement. What we will then do is to go out to various political parties that we believe are the better permutations and share this document with them,” he said.
Steenhuisen said that should their negotiations fail, they will be “very prepared to go and take up our seats as the official opposition and serve the residents in that council as the strong, determined and capable opposition for the next five years”.
Meanwhile, the Kou-Kamma and Dr Beyers Naudé local municipalities in the Eastern Cape are also hung municipalities after the ANC dropped its support below 50%.