South African Minister will pack his bags by Tuesday if demands are not met

Patriotic Alliance (PA) leader and Minister of Sports, Arts & Culture, Gayton McKenzie, has warned that he and all PA-deployed officials will vacate their government positions on Tuesday, 30 September.

This is unless the African National Congress (ANC) reinstates the party’s deputy Kenny Kunene to his previous role as MMC for Roads & Transport in Johannesburg.

The announcement, made in a social media post on 26 September, signals a major potential shake-up in local, provincial, and national coalition governance.

McKenzie made the threat in a detailed letter to supporters, citing repeated disputes with ANC coalition partners that, he says, have left the PA sidelined and humiliated.

“We have been pushed too far,” he wrote, alleging that Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero blocked the swearing-in of PA nominee Liam Jacobs for the Transport portfolio, after Kunene temporarily resigned.

McKenzie said that, according to the coalition agreement, the position belonged to the PA, not to an individual, and accused the ANC of attempting to dictate the party’s internal deployments.

“We signed for that portfolio, not for Kenny Kunene or Gayton McKenzie,” McKenzie said. “The position was given to the PA and not an individual. We take great exception to them wanting to prescribe who we deploy.”

The minister also cited the unresolved Kunene case as a key flashpoint. Kunene, who resigned in July from his MMC and councilor positions following a police raid at a residence connected to a murder suspect, was broadly cleared in a subsequent private investigation.

Now that Kunene is back, he has not been reinstated.

The letter highlighted recent service delivery failures as the “last straw” for the PA.

McKenzie described the water crisis in Westbury, Newclare, and Corriie, where residents went without water for weeks while nearby informal settlements received supplies.

He criticised the ANC and municipal authorities for failing to address the situation, which included police allegedly using excessive force against protesting residents.

Broader withdrawal

The Tuesday resignation threat is not limited to McKenzie alone. All PA-deployed officials across local, provincial, and national government coalitions with the ANC will step down if Kunene is not reinstated within seven days.

“Immediately after that, we are going to start the processes of withdrawing from the GNU,” McKenzie said during a Facebook Live address.

The PA holds a small but strategically crucial number of seats: 10 out of 270 in the Johannesburg council and nine of 400 in parliament.

In the past, the party’s swing votes have played decisive roles in shaping local administrations, including contributing to the collapse of previous DA-led councils.

McKenzie also hinted at the PA’s openness to alliances beyond the ANC. “We don’t have that thing of no, we’ll never work with the Democratic Alliance,” he said. “We will form a coalition with the DA if the ANC is going to treat us like that.”

DA officials, however, have stated they will only consider coalitions after election results to avoid instability.

The ANC did not respond to queries from Newsday on the matter.