The Accidental Mayor. Michael Beaumont
Johannesburg (44 per cent), Ekurhuleni and Mogale City (both 49 per cent), leaving the door wide open to coalitions.
The next two weeks were nerve-racking, as teams consisting of national and provincial leaders were sent into top-secret talks with potential partners. A deal was eventually concluded which formalised coalition arrangements between the DA, COPE, the IFP, the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP), the United Democratic Movement (UDM) and the Freedom Front Plus (FF+).
In Tshwane, Johannesburg and Mogale City, we still needed the cooperation of the red berets of the EFF. Whether they could be counted upon to unseat the ANC, no one really knew. But the agonising wait came to an end when the commander in chief of the EFF, Julius Malema, held a press conference in Alexandra township on 17 August 2016. Here he announced that the DA were the ‘better devils’ and that his party would be installing DA-led coalition governments to unseat the ANC.
Then came the word ‘however’, a word you learn to dread in politics. It silenced all of us, short-circuiting our celebrations. The only sticking point for them was the idea of installing Mashaba as mayor in Johannesburg – clearly his lifelong advocacy of neoliberal capitalism was asking too much of the Fighters.
Over the next few days, party heavyweights scrambled to deal with Malema’s ‘however’. Could we really drop the man who had adorned 200 000 posters and 100 000 T-shirts and who had been the face of our campaign for the past seven months? Those most eager to be in power after years in opposition would have sacrificed their young for this moment. Equally, there were those who would have seen the entire world crumble before allowing another party to effectively choose our leaders.
Mashaba received news of the EFF’s position like every other South African – through the media. He was called and asked to comment before anyone in the DA had actually informed him. Mashaba was not fazed. His nonchalance did not arise from apathy or exhaustion, although the latter was certainly warranted. His response was simply that if he was the obstacle to unseating the ANC and taking over Johannesburg, then let the task fall to someone else. He didn’t need this in his life. He had no ambitions for a political career; he was a self-made multimillionaire who could pick up any cause he wished to support. He had been cajoled into standing for mayor out of concern for where South Africa was going under the ANC.
As it was, the party’s leadership remained strong and stared down the EFF. After all, who were they kidding? They had spent an entire campaign promising voters they would punish the ANC by unseating them. How could they backtrack on this now? At the end of the day, it was all a bluff by the EFF. They needed to be seen flexing their muscles on these new arrangements so as not to appear to be formally involved in them.
One by one the inaugural council meetings for the new political terms were held. In Tshwane, the DA’s Solly Msimanga was elected unopposed, resulting in rapturous celebrations. In Mogale City, Lynn Pannall followed suit as the next DA mayor. Finally came Johannesburg, with a 14-hour council meeting that went on late into the night. Former mayor Parks Tau of the ANC stood against Mashaba.
In the meeting, EFF councillors alleged that the ANC’s Dan Bovu, the former member of the mayoral committee (MMC) for housing, had approached them the night before, offering them R500 000 for each vote for Parks Tau, a claim that Bovu denied. This drove the meeting into chaos, with councillors of the DA, EFF and coalition parties wanting to show their ballots openly to the crowd to prove that they had voted for Mashaba and had not sold out. The ANC objected vociferously whenever this happened and the meeting came close to falling apart. One of the ANC councillors collapsed during the proceedings and tragically passed away later.
Present at this meeting was EFF deputy president Floyd Shivambu, whose presence was felt in the room. Within moments he was on the stage as an observer, overseeing proceedings and ensuring that his councillors adhered to the decision to back the multiparty coalition.
This experience taught me something that I came to appreciate about the EFF. No matter our differences, the truth is that they were straight shooters. If they said they were going to do something, they did it.
In the end, the votes were counted and Mashaba was announced as the new executive mayor of the City of Johannesburg, with 144 to 125 votes.
The next day I returned to my office to continue with my post-election analysis, which would inform the way forward in our preparations for the 2019 general election. That Friday afternoon, I received a phone call from Mayor Mashaba.
In his gruff voice he got straight to the point: he wanted me to be his chief of staff and to come and meet with him. I said it sounded like an amazing opportunity and asked him when he would like to meet. ‘Now,’ came the response, so I set off immediately.
As I drove across Johannesburg to Braamfontein during rush hour, I thought about what this meant.
The golden rule for any political principal in picking a chief of staff is to choose someone you can trust with your life and who complements your way of working. A chief of staff has to be able to draw on that trust in order to say what no one else has the nerve to say to a political leader.
Mashaba and I did not know each other well. We had engaged with one another during the campaign, so we’d met many times over the boardroom table. But I could not claim to have been close to him, because the nature of coordinating so many campaigns did not allow for overinvestment in any one particular candidate. The rapport and trust that exists between a principal and their chief of staff would have to be built from scratch. We were very different. He was a self-made man, who had defied the odds by overcoming abject poverty and prospering under an oppressive apartheid regime. I had grown up with a family in which I had received every opportunity a child could dream of in South Africa. He had 25 years of life experience on me, but I had 10 years’ experience in running political campaigns.
Our styles of working were dangerously similar. Typically, a relationship of this nature requires personalities that balance each other, but we shared a no-nonsense, highly driven and direct approach to getting the job done and believed that to make an omelette, a few eggs had to be broken. Another thing we indisputably had in common was that neither one of us had the faintest idea what we were getting into.
It was always going to be a strange combination, one that could either succeed in spectacular ways or fail even more spectacularly. After a brief meeting, we agreed that I would start the following day.
I went home to deliver the news to my fiancée, Mia, who a few months later would become my wife. There is nothing quite like being the chief of staff to the mayor of Johannesburg while planning a wedding at the same time.
The role of chief of staff is filled with complexities, to put it mildly. It requires the ability to understand every objective and every priority set out by the mayor, whether stated or unstated, and drive the strategy that achieves them. A successful chief of staff is able to translate the mayor’s values, strategic direction and principles and apply them to the myriad everyday decisions that have to be made. Because a chief of staff’s authority is purely an extension of the mayor’s, the price for getting it wrong is high for your credibility and future agency.
The chief of staff is also the conduit between the administration and key stakeholders and the mayor, ensuring that everyone knows what course has been set and receives the assurance and guidance they need to perform their functions.
To add to the complexity of the role, the chief of staff also has to manage the interface between the government and the party. During the campaign, Mashaba never had time to deal with petty internal politics, and this wouldn’t change now that he was in government. It fell to me to engage with a DA that reacted to the anxiety of the new governing arrangements by completely overcompensating. To say that the DA reacted calmly to the development that it was governing in three new metros overnight would not be true. The party demonstrated early on that it would involve itself in the smallest details, much to the annoyance of Mashaba, who did not appreciate micromanagement.
So it was clear from the start that the job of chief of staff was always going to be interesting. As the mayor’s most senior advisor, I had to learn to weigh my words and advice within the framework of the constitutional powers granted to him. We would be confronted daily