The Democratic Alliance (DA) on Wednesday cited confusion about its values, infighting in its ranks and poor leadership, when it hit out at ActionSA in the City of Tshwane.

DA Tshwane spokesperson Kwena Moloto said ActionSA could no longer be relied on to ensure stable, effective government in the country’s capital.

“Whatever its outward pretensions, ActionSA intends to vote in favour of a motion of no confidence in Mayor Cilliers Brink whenever such a motion is tabled. Having failed to clinch a deal with other parties, it is now content to bring down the coalition and then to try its luck with a new deal,” he said.

Moloto said while ActionSA national chairperson Michael Beaumont said the party was still reviewing its participation in the Tshwane coalition, party leader Herman Mashaba had already made it clear that ActionSA would prefer to have the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) as a coalition partner.

This sentiment is shared by the party’s Tshwane caucus leader Jackie Mathebathe, Moloto added, saying it was Mathebathe who announced to the media that ActionSA had resolved to withdraw from the Tshwane multi-party coalition.

Moloto said that while Mathebathe’s remarks were later contradicted by Beaumont, it was Mathebathe who expressed the views of the party’s leader Mashaba.

He noted that on Tuesday Mathebathe told the media that ActionSA had not yet decided, holding the line of the so-called "review”, however in a Facebook post, he stated that ‘the days of white monopoly in Tshwane are numbered’.

He said Mathebathe’s post made it clear that he intended to bring down the multi-party coalition in Tshwane by voting in favour of the motion of no confidence in Brink.

He said, in the past few weeks, the DA and its partners in the Tshwane multi-party coalition had made “every attempt” to persuade ActionSA to not withdraw from the coalition, and to stop it from making public attacks on the coalition government.

“Not only has Mayor Cilliers Brink reached out to ActionSA’s national leadership, but the coalition management committee in Tshwane has written to ActionSA’s local leadership to invoke its obligations in terms of our coalition agreement,” Moloto added.

He said ActionSA leaders had behaved “as if they are not bound by any coalition agreement”, and was not happy that internal party processes took precedence over the commitments it made with its coalition partners.

Moloto said ActionSA was gambling with the future of the City of Tshwane, and the lives of Tshwane residents.