Setting the record straight: ActionSA knew exactly what it was voting for when it supported Tshwane’s budget

3 October 2023

The statement by Michael Beaumont, national chairperson of ActionSA, that his party was unaware of the 0% salary increase for Tshwane employees when his party supported the city’s budget is a startling admission of incompetence. More likely, it is an outright lie.

The single biggest issue facing the capital city is that it is running out of money, and so at the outset of his term of office Mayor Cilliers Brink made it clear that difficult decisions will have to be made to secure the city’s future.

If these decisions are avoided or abandoned, then Tshwane will not escape the death spiral of many other municipalities in the country. These are the municipalities that keep agreeing to salary increases they can’t afford, and then fail to pay employees on time, and use their pension contributions to fund operational expenditure.

As the second largest party in Tshwane’s Multi-Party Coalition, ActionSA is fully aware of the city’s precarious financial situation and how limited the options are to remedy the situation. They have seats on the city’s mayoral committee, and so ActionSA leaders participated in the budget steering committee earlier this year.

The budget steering committee, conducted with the assistance of National Treasury, produced a budget with a R3 billion funding gap (a so-called unfunded budget). To bridge this gap over the next three years, a funding plan was devised. The budget and the funding plan were both adopted by the municipal council in June of this year.

Not only did the budget report make it clear that the city was not budgeting for salary increases for employees and councillors, the funding plan anticipated that about R600 million of the city’s R3 billion funding gap would be filled by seeking exemption from the salary increment. In truth, this is R600 million which the city simply does not have.

If Tshwane was in a position to pay such a generous increase, it would not have fallen behind on payments to Eskom and other creditors. This was explained to trade unions, as it was to ActionSA, in advance of the budget being approved for public participation.

And, as if to eliminate any chance of confusion, one of the resolutions taken by the municipal council instructed the city manager by express resolution to invoke a clause in the wage agreement that allows the city to seek exemption from paying the increases.

This was all explained in painstaking detail, not only to ActionSA, but also the trade unions whose bidding ActionSA now seeks to do at the eleventh hour. And so, contrary to what Beaumont now claims, the evidence makes it clear that:

- ActionSA knew exactly what it voted for when it supported Tshwane budget, including the 0% increase for employees and councillors. So did each of the other parties in the Tshwane Multi-Party Coalition, as well as the ANC. At the time ActionSA offered no alternative in place of the R600 million salary saving, or any other suggestion of how Tshwane R3 billion funding gap could be filled.

- ActionSA now wants to make political gains from the disruption of services caused by the unprotected strike and the campaign of violence and criminality unleashed on the city. Lobbied by the ANC-aligned SA Municipal Workers Union, ActionSa now seeks to “compel” the Tshwane Multi-Party Coalition to negotiate over salary increases. This, in essence, means negotiating to pay increases that the city cannot afford and that have not been budgeted for.

- The effect of ActionSA’s opportunism and dishonesty is likely to embolden Samwu, and those Samwu factions driving the campaign of violence and criminality against the city. Far from being the voice of reason, ActionSA has identified itself as the weakest link in the Tshwane Multi-Party Coalition, open to manipulation and coat-turning by its own internal divisions and its penchant for opportunism.

Contrary to statements made by ActionSA’s national leaders, none of whom actually live in Tshwane or seem to have a clue what their local leaders are doing, the Mayor and the City Manager have not refused to meet with trade unions. What they have made clear is that such talks are no alternative to the court process that the city has embarked on.

To create the expectation that salary increases can be paid would be dishonest and cause even greater labour instability. It would also undermine the city’s case in court, where the case being made is that if the salary increases were to be paid the city’s financial distress would be deepened to the detriment of residents and employees.

ActionSA, in its statements, claims that the city is contravention of a bargaining council agreement, where the city in actual fact is making use of a clause in the agreement by applying for exemption, as per a council resolution supported by ActionSA.

Governing within a constrained financial environment requires a strong stomach by those in power to ensure that our actions are designed to rescue Tshwane and Gauteng. Flinching during the slightest sign of adversity is not what residents of Tshwane and Gauteng expect from their government. Coalition unity is therefore, now, more important than ever before.

Therefore, despite ActionSA’s opportunistic and dishonest conduct, the DA remains committed to the Tshwane Multi-Party Coalition. What is at stake is the future of the capital city, and credibility of coalitions as an alternative to the ANC’s legacy of misrule and failure.

Issued by Kwena Moloto, DA Caucus Spokesperson, Tshwane, 3 October 2023