The ANC in the North West has reached a cooperation agreement with the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) with the aim of stabilising governance in various municipal councils in the province.
The Party said that the decision was taken after an assessment of the impact made by the smaller political parties that initially entered coalition within Bojanala Platinum District Municipality and other municipalities in the province.
Hardly a year ago the party signed a coalition agreement with Botho Community Movement (BCM) Forum for Service Delivery, F4SD, African Independent Congress, AIC and an independent councillor in a move touted to pave the way for “smooth service delivery” to all the residents of the Rustenburg Local Municipality.
Speaking on YOU FM Newshour, ANC Provincial Spokesperson Tumelo Maruping said that after a careful assessment of the party’s Provincial Executive Committee, PEC, they decided to engage other political parties with an intention to stabilise government in various municipalities.
“Following numerous consultations with the parties you are referring to, and given the dynamics of the North West, we have taken the decision as the ANC that we must engage other political parties and particularly the EFF into not necessarily a coalition but a ‘Cooperation Agreement.’
This agreement is not only for Bojanala Municipalities because as I said the dynamics do differ from one municipality to another.
If you look closely into the parties that we had engaged with in Rustenburg, we had political parties that only exist only in that municipality,” said Maruping.
The ANC said after a careful consideration it realised that it still unable to stabilize various municipalities.
“Given the dynamics that would have happened for example in Ditsobotla Local Municipality in Lichtenburg, dynamics that would have affected our stability in JB Marks Local Municipality in Potchefstroom, we then decided that probably for us to reach stability it would be good to engage political parties that are voted for at the local and national levels and therefore we realised that it is not working for us to focus on smaller parties that exist in one particular municipality only.
As a result of some of those reasons, we then started numerous engagements with such parties which includes Economic Freedom Fighters, hence we reached an agreement with EFF and therefore we are not doing it in Bojanala but also in JB Marks, Ditsobotla,” explained Maruping.
The ANC said that the agreement with the EFF had nothing to do with power sharing in the agreed municipalities.
“The reason we don’t call it a coalition is because the cooperation arrangement or agreement is not based on positions like how the coalitions we conceptualised initially.
But of course, there are for instance members of Mayoral Committees in Rustenburg that has been allocated to the EFF, MPAC in Madibeng, but what I am trying to say is that the cooperation agreement is solely based in principle in terms of the discussions we want to achieve within those councils.
But where there are those available and we realise that there’s capacity in the EFF on certain portfolios we will seat and allocate certain positions to them,” emphasised the spokesperson.
