The ANC in Johannesburg has parted ways with the Patriotic Alliance, the coalition partner who helped the party regain power in the country’s economic hub.

In a statement released late on Tuesday, the AN Greater Johannesburg region said it ended its coalition arranged with the PA due to disagreements.

“This comes after both parties could not agree on how to handle matter of governance in the municipal entities. Failure to understand the separation between the party and the state, suspension of employees without following proper procedure and a lack of due regard for good governance by the PA are key to the collapse of the infant coalition.

“The ANC has an understanding that the parties involved in the Government of Local Unity (GLU) modeled an agreement to build a local government that has the capacity to, amongst others, provide democratic and accountable government…

“The ANC wishes to make it clear that it will not compromise on the agreement and memorandum of understanding taken at the advent of the formation of the Government of Local Unity, as a leader of the majority party. To this end, the ANC also seeks to encourage Johannesburg residents to go out in their numbers to vote for the ANC across the five (5) Wards partaking in the Bi-elections on the 11th November 2020 to ensure decisive victory for the African National Congress,” regional spokesperson Sasabona Manganye said in a statement.

The Patriotic Alliance was one of the political parties which gave the ANC the majority vote it needed to regain the control of the City of Johannesburg which the ruling party had lost to the DA after the 2016 local government elections.

In its own statement, the PA said it met with the ANC on Monday and the ruling party informed them the relationship between the two parties had broken down so much that the ANC would “rather return to opposition benches”.

The split between the parties is believed to be related to the suspension of Johannesburg Property Company executives Sthembiso Mntungwa, Sipho Mzobe and Fitzgerald Ramaboea – all believed to be ANC members.

PA said the reasons for the suspension of the executives were detailed in the Monday meeting.

“The actual reasons against them was that Mntungwa and Ramaboea had signed off the awarding of multi-million rand Covid-19 cleaning and sanitisation contracts to 80 companies. These companies were placed on an emergency panel that was established without JPC following any normal tender procedures.

“Nearly R50m was spent on questionable cleaning exercises, including fogging underground parking lots, which we as the PA are concerned was just an excuse to cynically use the pandemic to dispense ratepayer money to politically connected business people,” the PA said in its official statement.