ANC, DA get up close in Cape cliffhanger :: Namibia Internet Gateway cc ::

Articles: ANC, DA get up close in Cape cliffhanger

Posted by admin on Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - 08:11 AM

TALKS continued well into the late hours last night to cobble together a coalition government for the city of Cape Town as the new council meets today for its inaugural sitting.
Vukani Mde and Karima Brown
Last night speculation was rife that a grand coalition including the African National Congress (ANC) and the Democratic Alliance (DA) was on the cards. The chief negotiators from both parties were playing their cards close to their chests last night and refused to give details of their intense talks, which lasted most of yesterday. But indications were that the two were not as far from striking a deal as their recent public posturing has indicated. “Nothing is impossible,” said ANC provincial secretary Mcebisi Skwatsha when asked if the ANC was negotiating a grand coalition with its bitter rivals, the DA. He said the ANC was in talks with “no less than five parties” to find a way out of the impasse in time to meet a March 22 deadline for a metro government. DA chief negotiator Ryan Coetzee echoed Skwatsha’s sentiment, saying a deal including both parties was likely today. “The ANC and DA have no principle position that says we can’t be in the same government. I can’t predict the future but you will see the formation of a government (today),” he said. Coetzee’s statement marked a departure from the DA’s earlier stance that they would not work with the ANC, preferring a coalition of opposition parties. But the factor that seems to have shifted the DA is the seeming reluctance of Patricia de Lille’s Independent Democrats (ID), which won 11% of the vote in the March 1 municipal polls, to throw its weight behind one or other of the two main parties in the Cape metro standoff. De Lille maintains that only a unity government including the DA, ANC, ID and a slew of smaller parties, would work for the city and its voters. Increasing the likelihood of a deal between the ANC and DA would be a common desire to exclude De Lille’s ID, which they both thought had overplayed its hand as a kingmaker in the hung council. A coalition government between the DA and ANC could function effectively without the help of the ID or any of the other smaller political parties. A DA-ANC government would also not be unheard of in the province, following their toenadering in the Central Karoo district in a common effort to exclude the former ANC municipal manager and local strongman Truman Prince and his Independent Civics Organisation of SA (Icosa). Further indicating the imminence of a deal, the ANC has also climbed down on its insistence on an executive mayor to rule the city. All five metros under ANC outright rule will appoint mayors with extensive executive powers but last night Skwatsha said the ANC would not insist on this system in Cape Town, where opposition parties oppose it in favour of a more inclusive mayoral committee system. Should the ANC and DA find each other today, the most likely scenario would be a DA-led mayoral committee, with DA candidate Helen Zille as mayor. But in exchange, the ANC would likely insist on an equal number of mayoral committee seats, which would include key delivery portfolios such as housing, electricity, and water and sanitation. This would allow the ruling party to retain control over implementation of national government policy.

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