Party Bosses Haggle Over eThekwini While Voters Wait

A newly minted National Negotiation Team is preparing to sit down with ANC representatives in the coming days, and the thing they're negotiating over is eThekwini. Not the people who live there. The council. The seats. The right to run a municipality after the latest results showed no party winning an outright majority.

That's how the machinery works. Millions of ballots get cast, the count comes back fractured, and a handful of senior figures retreat to rooms where the real deals are made. The voters have already done their part. They've been thanked and sent home.

Who Has the Power

The MK Party's new negotiating team reads like a roll call of the party's upper floors: advocate Dali Mpofu, first deputy president Duduzane Zuma, second deputy president Tony Yengeni, KwaZulu-Natal provincial convenor Willies Mchunu, acting secretary-general Lindi Mtshali-Makhubu, national chairperson Mxolisi Phakathi and former treasurer-general Dr Thanti Mthanti. Seven people. They'll decide who governs a city of ordinary residents.

The talk from inside the party is blunt about what drives it. "We are not going to allow the DA to dictate the rules in eThekwini or anywhere where we achieved a majority," a senior MK Party insider told IOL. Another put it plainly: "We have the majority, and we want black parties to unite. We are not going to be left out again."

Notice the language. Left out. Allowed. Dictate. This is a fight about who sits at the table, conducted in the vocabulary of ownership.

What They're Calling "Unity"

The other side talks the same way. A DA insider said the party has been working behind the scenes to block an MK deal. "We cannot have an MK coalition of any kind in eThekwini. I can tell you our GNU partners are talking to avoid that. One of the key players is the IFP because we know MK is speaking to them." Helen Zille, a senior DA leader, has publicly warned against any coalition involving the MK Party.

So the DA is lobbying its partners to freeze out a party that, according to reported results, is the third-largest nationally and the largest in KwaZulu-Natal. The DA insider framed it as a "commitment to keeping the GNU and the provincial government of unity." Unity, here, means keeping a particular arrangement of parties in the room and a particular one out.

We've seen this film before. After the 2024 elections, two years ago, the MK Party was excluded from governing arrangements despite its strong electoral performance. A coalition of the ANC, IFP and EFF kept it out of power in eThekwini. MK insiders say they're worried about a repeat. The people who voted for them in 2024 got a lesson in what a ballot is worth once the horse-trading starts.

The Reform Trap

The same insider who wants an alliance with the ANC admitted the shape of the thing. "The old man has warmed up to speaking to the ANC. Ramaphosa is on his way out, and we are finding each other." The talk is of an "alliance of progressive black parties," with differences to be "put aside" for "the sake of our people."

Put aside the differences, and the power stays exactly where it is. Parties swap partners, the council changes hands, and the structure that decides things from above remains untouched. One insider said the eThekwini talks "will set a precedent for other municipalities in KZN and even the country." A precedent for more of the same: bargaining between organizations, with residents as the audience.

Meanwhile, the MK Party says it has secured outright control of three municipalities, Richmond, iMpendle and Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, and leads in 17 others across the province. Every one of those councils will be run by whoever wins the bargaining, not by the people living under it.

The talks start in days. Nobody in the base reporting has said a word about asking residents what they want.