Africa-Press – South-Africa. DA supporters have encouraged the party to engage in coalition talks with the ANC.
This was according to DA Gauteng leader Solly Msimanga, who said polling by the party showed its supporters were not against engaging in talks with the ANC.
But, Msimanga added, the supporters also required strict terms for such talks, which should be anchored on good governance terms outlined in a clear coalition engagement document.
Msimanga said the party had to prepare for the likelihood of coalition negotiations in 2024 and it should consider who it could engage with.
Msimanga said:
He was speaking on News24’s Frontline webinar on Friday.
Msimanga said the DA could not single out all political parties in coalition talks, except for the EFF, which he said the DA had opposing political views to.
“I will talk to anyone who ensures we have clean governance in place, clean, corrupt-free and well-oiled machinery in the government. When a leader says, ‘we want to kill a particular race’, while you know that the particular race represents a large portion of your electorate, how do you formalise peace with that?” he said.
Msimanga qualified the polling data, saying the DA’s leadership, or even its conference, would first have to mull over the suggestion and come up with a method of engagement.
He said it wouldn’t be up to one person to decide whether the party would work with the ANC.
The DA has opposed the ANC’s policies and criticised the party for its stance on cadre deployment, broad-based black economic empowerment, and land redistribution.
“The decision to go into talks with the ANC would be something the party at the federal level would need to engage on. This is not a decision that Helen Zille (DA federal chairperson) would be making on her own, but something that the party would have to engage on,” Msimanga said.
ActionSA national chairperson Michael Beaumont, in response to Msimanga, said flirtations with the ANC were a hypocritical stance.
Beaumont, who was also part of the Frontline discussion, said it was unjustifiable to work with the same political party that had created the conditions the DA actively campaigned against.
“The biggest problem we have at the moment is political parties muting the idea of going into coalitions with a political party they have campaigned against, which is a huge contradiction,” Beaumont said.
For More News And Analysis About South-Africa Follow Africa-Press
