Athol Trollip argues that cooperation can open a new chapter in local government. Tshwane’s council arithmetic gives ActionSA room to negotiate, but residents need more than a workable majority.
In Tshwane, the gap between political influence and the power to govern can be counted. The Democratic Alliance has 74 council seats, ActionSA 48 and the African National Congress 44, according to the Electoral Commission’s municipal results record, updated on 12 November. An outright majority of the 214-seat council requires 108 seats. Nobody reaches it alone.
That is the setting for Athol Trollip’s defence of coalition politics. The ActionSA parliamentary leader presents cooperation as a practical response to a divided electorate, with service delivery and accountability providing the basis for agreement. His argument deserves attention because it acknowledges a reality that campaign language often obscures: a party can win substantial support and still need opponents to help it govern.
It also invites a harder question. If pragmatism allows a party to negotiate widely, what keeps that flexibility attached to a public purpose once the mayoral positions have been allocated?
Leverage is real, but it is shared
Trollip’s central political distinction is between binding a party to partners before an election and negotiating after voters have distributed the seats. He rejects the first as a constraint on ActionSA’s independence and embraces the second as a necessary responsibility. In his account, willingness to talk to the DA or another party should be judged against what an agreement would deliver.
Tshwane makes the distinction concrete. A combination of the DA and ActionSA would hold 122 seats. ActionSA and the ANC together would hold 92, leaving them 16 short of an outright majority. Those are calculations from the IEC’s seat allocations, not evidence of a negotiated agreement or a prediction of who will become mayor. They show why ActionSA matters, while also showing that its bargaining power operates within limits.
The largest party has a strong political claim to lead negotiations. It does not follow that smaller parties must accept its terms. Equally, the ability to assemble an alternative majority does not, by itself, demonstrate that the resulting administration will be coherent or accountable. The public interest turns on the commitments, personnel and safeguards that hold the arrangement together.
The graphic’s figures in text: DA, 74 seats; ActionSA, 48; ANC, 44; all remaining parties, 48. DA plus ActionSA equals 122, which is 14 above the outright-majority threshold. ActionSA plus ANC equals 92, which is 16 below it. This threshold describes a majority of the full council, rather than every voting rule that may apply at a meeting.
Nationally, ActionSA’s gains should be kept in proportion. The government news service’s account of the IEC announcement places it fifth, with 5.67% of the vote and 313 council seats. The ANC remained the largest party nationally, with 30.76%. A weakened ANC remains capable of influencing who governs. Decline and disappearance are different political conditions.
The strongest case against easy optimism
Trollip’s optimism about cooperation meets an obvious challenge: South Africa has already experienced coalition government. The post-election governance guidance reported by SAnews records that coalition-led municipalities increased to 76 after the 2021 elections, against a background of political instability and service-delivery difficulties. Cooperation cannot be treated as an untested remedy whose success follows automatically from its adoption.
The strongest defence of Trollip’s position is that fragmented representation requires negotiation, whether parties welcome it or not. The strongest objection is that negotiation can become an end in itself. An administration may survive successive political bargains while failing to build reliable systems for maintenance, procurement and financial control.
For residents, the useful distinction is between an agreement that distributes offices and one that establishes enforceable expectations. A credible deal should identify service priorities, the money available, deadlines, reporting duties and a procedure for settling disputes. Public progress reports would make it possible to distinguish a missed target from a revised promise. These are standards by which to judge a coalition, rather than claims that any proposed partnership has already met them.
The official guidance supplies an essential boundary: coalition agreements cannot supersede the Constitution or municipal legislation. A party’s consent cannot make an unlawful appointment or expenditure lawful. Political stability has value when it helps an administration fulfil its duties.
Putting rights inside the promise to fix things
Trollip also links ActionSA’s appeal to prioritising South Africans, including in access to public services. That position needs a distinction between immigration enforcement and the rights governing a school or a medical emergency. A campaign slogan cannot settle both questions.
The Constitution’s sections 27 and 29 protect access to healthcare services and basic education in language referring to everyone; section 27 also says that no one may be refused emergency medical treatment. Healthcare access is subject to the Constitution’s provisions on reasonable measures and available resources. These protections do not mean that every public benefit has identical eligibility rules, or that immigration law is irrelevant. They do mean that citizenship alone cannot explain the full legal position.
Nor does the presence of a foreign national in a queue establish improper preference. That requires evidence about the applicable rules and how they were applied. A party promising competent government should be expected to make that distinction, particularly where frustration over scarce services can turn people against one another.
What would vindicate the wager
Trollip’s account offers a clear proposition: parties can retain their identities while cooperating to repair government. The election arithmetic gives that proposition practical significance. It supplies no guarantee of success.
ActionSA’s leverage creates an opportunity to demand measurable commitments from prospective partners. It also creates responsibility for the choices it makes. Residents should be able to see what the party secured, what it conceded and how it will respond when an administration misses its obligations.
The test of the new council will continue after the coalition announcement. It will be whether residents can obtain dependable services, scrutinise spending and identify who must answer when something fails. That is the point at which pragmatism becomes a governing record.
