Helen Zille strikes back: ActionSA turned a blind eye to ANC corruption and gave Julius Malema what he wanted

The Democratic Alliance’s Johannesburg mayoral candidate, Helen Zille, has responded to accusations that she has been detrimental to coalitions.

In an interview with Newsday, ActionSA national chairperson Michael Beaumont said that Zille has been the poison in coalitions.

He cited the Democratic Alliance (DA)-led multi-party coalition in the City of Johannesburg, with Mpho Phalatse as mayor.

The core coalition included the DA, ActionSA, IFP, VF Plus, ACDP, and COPE, which later brought into a working alignment with Gayton McKenzie’s PA.

In 2022 and 2023, the coalition became unstable, which culminated in a successful motion of no confidence ending Phalatse’s tenure as mayor.

According to Beaumont, there was an opportunity to reclaim the city from the ANC and EFF coalition. He accused Zille of stopping this from happening.

“Zille has repeatedly acted as a disruptive force in Gauteng coalition negotiations. On multiple occasions, viable agreements were on the table, which she broke,” he said.

“ActionSA, the DA, the Patriotic Alliance, and other former partners reached a consensus to restore the coalition,” he said.

“To make this work, ActionSA surrendered two of its three Mayoral Committee seats to the Patriotic Alliance, securing the majority to reinstate Mpho Phalatse as mayor.”

“Hands were shaken, and PA leader Gayton McKenzie publicly announced the deal. Yet, Helen Zille single-handedly vetoed the agreement.”

“Constructive members exist within the DA, but the party frequently puts forward leaders who lack the temperament to manage multi-party environments,” he added.

Beaumont said that coalitions only succeed when guided by the right leadership, like Nasiphi Moya, ActionSA’s City of Tshwane mayor.

Helen Zille responds to Michael Beaumont’s accusations

Helen Zille, through her campaign manager, Nicole van Dyk, responded to Beaumont’s accusations. For the sake of accuracy, the full response is provided below.

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Claim by Michael Beaumont: Constructive members exist within the DA, but the party frequently puts forward leaders who lack the temperament to manage multi-party environments.

Response: ‘The DA’s leaders have repeatedly refused to overlook corruption or service delivery failures for the sake of coalition stability, while ActionSA believes that staying in power at all costs is the only thing that matters. 

For this reason, they facilitated and enabled the EFF’s capture of key positions in the City of Johannesburg for the purposes of looting.  ActionSA has also turned a blind eye to the ANC’s corruption in Tshwane to hold on to power.

When Herman Mashaba became mayor of the City of Johannesburg in 2016, with Beaumont as his chief of staff, he understood that, through a confidence-and-supply agreement with the EFF, he could remain Joburg’s mayor only at Julius Malema’s pleasure.

As someone who served as a councillor during that time, I have first-hand knowledge of how Mashaba stopped attending our caucus meetings and decided to brief the EFF leadership more than his own party’s leaders. And how he bent his knee to Malema’s every demand.

Every time Mashaba needed to get a majority vote in Council (for example, to pass the institutional review or budget), Julius Malema would name his price. 

The first concession was to enable Julius Malema to ensure that his friend, Shadrack Sibiya, was installed as the City’s top “anti-corruption cop”.

That position was filled, although Sibiya did not meet the qualifications required. Nor did his appointment go through the proper process. That was the payback for the EFF’s support for Mashaba’s election as Mayor.

Smart move by Julius:  as we have learnt through the Madlanga Commission, when the corrupt want to loot the state, their first move is to capture the leadership of the police to protect themselves from the consequences.

When Mashaba wanted to get his proposed “institutional review” through the Council, the price Malema demanded was the dismantling of the City Power board and the firing of the Managing Director to put his own people in place.

Malema enabled the capture of City Power to retain the support of the EFF. The result is the near-complete collapse of the entity, which is now in debt to the tune of R16-billion, bringing Joburg to its knees.

This was repeated when Mashaba wanted to pass the 2018 budget. The price? The Afrirent Fleet Tender, horrendously manipulated at double the competitor’s price to ensure that an EFF-linked company won it.  Then money flowed into front entities, linked to Malema, such as Mahuna and Santa Clara.

This was exactly why Helen Zille didn’t want the DA to reach a “confidence and supply” arrangement with the EFF in 2016.  She knew the inevitable result would be that Mashaba would become beholden to the EFF.  That is promptly what happened.

Later in 2023, ActionSA believed it could work against its own coalition partners in Johannesburg, because that way, they had a chance of winning the mayoral chain once more.

After the Patriotic Alliance had crossed the floor to the ANC, ActionSA worked hard to get them back through promises of tender-rich portfolios in the City, on the basis of an agreement that would elevate ActionSA into the mayoralty.

When that ruse failed, because the DA saw through it, ActionSA showed its true colours by voting for the ANC’s Dada Morero as Mayor in response to the position of Speaker.

Another example: in Tshwane, ActionSA believes coalition management means turning a blind eye to the serious corruption allegations faced by ANC deputy mayor Eugene Modise while the cost of lucrative water tankers continues to escalate.

It means overlooking the clearly unlawful actions of your coalition partner and speaker of the council by disallowing the votes of councillors, leading to the suspension of the municipal manager.

The DA would rather fight against corruption than act like ActionSA, facilitating and turning a blind eye to the blatant corruption of its coalition partners in order to attain, and remain in, power.

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Claim by Michael Beaumont: ActionSA national chairperson Michael Beaumont said that Helen Zille has been the poison in coalitions, and she has even kept her own party out of power.

Response: ‘Helen Zille managed the first successful metropolitan coalition government in post-democratic South Africa when she became mayor of the City of Cape Town in March 2006 through a seven-party minority coalition.

At the time, coalitions were far more difficult to manage than they are now because floor-crossing was still permitted, leading to extremely fragile coalition arrangements.

Zille became the mastermind of coalition management through consistent, frequent consultation with her coalition partners, while insisting on ethical governance.

The only poison in coalitions is those who succumb to corrupt demands in order to stay in power.  This is the poison that ActionSA has brought to coalition politics in South Africa

Helen Zille’s approach to coalition governance has always been guided by the need for genuine values alignment and service delivery for all, which is why she has repeatedly said she is unable to work with parties like uMkhonto we Sizwe Party (MKP) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), who repeatedly question the founding principles our constitution.

Unlike ActionSA, whose leader, Herman Mashaba, has repeatedly said they are in politics for power, Zille doesn’t believe the Democratic Alliance (DA) should enter into coalitions at all costs and would rather remain in opposition if it proves impossible to establish a stable and principled coalition.

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Claim by Michael Beaumont: Zille has repeatedly acted as a disruptive force in Gauteng coalition negotiations. On multiple occasions, viable agreements were on the table, which she broke.

Response: The only political party that has on numerous occasions voted against its own coalition agreements, worked behind the back of its own coalition partners and voted out its own coalition mayor is ActionSA, not the DA.

While ActionSA may desperately try to rewrite history and confuse voters, the truth always comes out in the end. It is therefore no wonder why former Johannesburg Mayor Mpho Phalatse said ActionSA was, by far, the most difficult coalition partners to work with.

In the City of Johannesburg’s DA-led coalition, ActionSA on numerous occasions worked behind the coalition’s back to appease the PA, which voted against its own coalition in a bid to get control of the tender-rich economic development portfolio, which housed the Metro Trading Company, despite a coalition agreement being in place.

In the end, this back-channelling led to the coalition’s collapse and Mpho Phalatse’s ousting as mayor. Because of its desire for positions and powers, it was then ActionSA who – according to their leader, Herman Mashaba – ‘proudly’ voted for the ANC’s Dada Morero to become Joburg Mayor, effectively handing power back to the ANC after the party destroyed the city.

In the City of Tshwane, it was ActionSA that collapsed its own coalition with the DA to work with the ANC to secure control of the mayoralty for ActionSA’s Nasiphi Moya.

Moya was the deputy Mayor under Cilliers Brink, but effectively worked against him and against the coalition agreement in place to grab the Mayor’s seat as soon as she could.

Nowhere in South Africa has the DA ever voted against a coalition agreement, whereas ActionSA has repeatedly ignored existing coalition agreements and worked against its own coalition partners.

The facts show that it is Herman Mashaba, Michael Beaumont and ActionSA who have been the most disruptive and destructive force to stable coalitions in Gauteng.

The only way to avoid the same coalition chaos playing out in Gauteng metros again after the 2026 elections is for voters to consolidate around the DA rather than giving smaller parties such as ActionSA their vote, which has always led to unstable coalitions.

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Claim by Michael Beaumont: To make this work, ActionSA surrendered two of its three Mayoral Committee seats to the Patriotic Alliance, securing the majority to reinstate Mpho Phalatse as mayor.

Response: What Michael Beaumont conveniently forgets about its supposedly ‘selfless’ act to surrender two of its Mayoral Committee seats was that ActionSA wanted a quid pro quo. Their first prize was the mayoral position, but their fallback was to get control of the powerful Speaker position.

All these dealings were done behind the backs of their own coalition partners, effectively working against the processes set out in the coalition agreement they had signed.

This underscores Mpho Phalatse’s observation that ActionSA was the most unreliable coalition partner, prepared to ignore a coalition agreement in pursuit of more power and positions.

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Claim by Michael Beaumont: He said that, in an era of coalitions which run local governments, figures like Helen Zille and Cilliers Brink represent an obstacle to effective governance.

Response: The only obstacle Helen Zille and Cilliers Brink have to ActionSA is that they have repeatedly stood in the way of corrupt dealings, which ActionSA was prepared to facilitate and countenance in order to gain power at any cost. The DA enters into coalitions to improve service delivery to all residents, while ActionSA enters coalitions to get power.

In the City of Johannesburg in 2024, it was ActionSA who handed power back to the ANC by voting for Dada Morero to become mayor. ActionSA is as guilty of the water and electricity outages across the city as the ANC.

In the City of Tshwane in 2024, it was ActionSA that removed the DA and worked with the ANC, where ActionSA mayor Nasiphi Moya now repeatedly overlooks the corruption allegations of her own ANC deputy mayor, Eugene Modise, while the costs of lucrative water tankers continue to escalate.

The DA enters coalition governments on the condition of service delivery; ActionSA enters coalition governments on positions of power.

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Claim by Michael Beaumont: He added that it is rich for Zille to claim that she and the DA want to rescue Johannesburg from the ANC when they effectively handed power to the ANC.

Response: It was Herman Mashaba who walked off the job and then effectively handed Johannesburg to the ANC when he resigned as Mayor in 2019. 

ActionSA voted for Dada Morero’s election as City of Johannesburg mayor, not the DA. The only party that has handed power back to the ANC is ActionSA, not the DA.

This is why Helen Zille has repeatedly said that, to avoid this coalition chaos in the Gauteng metropolitan municipalities, voters need to consolidate around the DA in order to form stable coalition governments.

Small parties such as ActionSA have repeatedly shown that they care more about power and positions than service delivery to all residents.

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