ActionSA Set To Seize Tshwane And Johannesburg — DA Faces Biggest Coalition Defeat Yet

Political analyst Gayton McKenzie fired a direct warning across South Africa’s coalition landscape on Thursday, predicting that ActionSA will capture both the City of Tshwane and the City of Johannesburg through a calculated alliance with the ANC — a move that could redraw municipal power entirely.

McKenzie named Herman Mashaba as the incoming Executive Mayor of Johannesburg, with Nasiphi Moya positioned to take Tshwane’s top chair. Under this arrangement, the ANC secures Ekurhuleni as its reward — a political trade that would leave the Democratic Alliance frozen out of every major Gauteng metro it currently controls.

DA Premier Helen Zille and Tshwane Mayor Cilliers Brink will lose their positions if McKenzie’s forecast proves accurate. Brink declined to comment directly, while DA communications staff had not responded to detailed questions by publication deadline. ActionSA itself remained publicly silent on the specific arrangement McKenzie described.

The prediction arrives against a backdrop of intensifying post-election horse-trading across Gauteng metros. ActionSA, battered at the national ballot but still holding meaningful council seats, finds itself holding unexpected leverage — a scenario seasoned strategists describe as the ANC’s deliberate long game, positioning weaker parties as frontmen while retaining substantive influence.

What struck observers watching McKenzie’s statement spread across social feeds was the detail buried at the end — Cape Town Mayoral Committee member Geordin Hill-Lewis, now leading DA federal outreach, spotted making urgent calls to both MK Party and Economic Freedom Fighters representatives. Insiders described a visibly rattled Hill-Lewis reaching across ideological lines he publicly condemned months earlier, the desperation written plainly on his schedule.

Neither Mashaba nor Moya has formally confirmed any arrangement. No joint press briefing has been announced. No council vote has been scheduled. What remains unanswered is the question that every DA voter in Sandton, Pretoria East, and Centurion must now sit with quietly: if the party that promised clean governance loses every major city it controlled — not to opposition votes, but to backroom arithmetic — what exactly did they win.