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Interview starts at the 1:22 mark

JEREMY MAGGS: Well, finally, the Gauteng Premier, Panyaza Lesufi, has announced his cabinet after a fortnight of postponements due to deadlocked negotiations with the Democratic Alliance [DA]. Effectively, it’s a minority government that has been formed with the Patriotic Alliance [PA], the IFP [Inkatha Freedom Party] and Rise Mzansi.

The DA is saying it pulled out of being part of government in the province because the ANC [African National Congress] wanted to strong-arm it. Let’s start our coverage with the Gauteng Premier, Panyaza Lesufi, who is with me. First of all, premier, is this really the outcome that you wanted?

PANYAZA LESUFI: I think it’s a misleading statement that it is a minority government. What we have here, we have a government that has political parties that have publicly endorsed a government of national unity [GNU] and we also have organisations that have not publicly endorsed, but are willing to work with the ANC and they’ve committed themselves to work with the ANC.

If you exclude the DA, that have decided not to work with the ANC in Gauteng, you’ve got 78% of political parties that have indicated one form of partnership and relationship with the ANC.

I’ll give you an example, the Freedom Front Plus say the DA didn’t treat them well when they left them at the Moonshot [Pact] and they feel they can work with the ANC and they want to chair two committees as part of their signature of the government of national unity and government of provincial unity. I doubt you have added their two seats in the numbers that you have just alluded to.

You take ActionSA, they want to remain an independent party, but they said to us, give us a committee to chair called Scopa [Standing Committee on Public Accounts] so that we can hold you accountable. If we feel you are doing good, we’ll support you. If we feel that you’re not doing good, we’ll oppose you. It’s a 50/50 political party. They’ve got three seats. Did you add them? No.

You go to MK Party [uMkhonto weSizwe Party], when they were voting for the speaker, they voted with us. Did you add them? No. I can go on and on and on with ACDP [African Christian Democratic Party] and all the other political parties that are not in the executive, but they want to work with the ANC.

So what we have here is we have a delicate situation where we need to balance those who believe they can work with us in terms of the government of national unity, and we’ve demonstrated that by electing them in the executive.

But there are those who want to work with the government of provincial unity, but they don’t want positions in committees, and they also don’t want a position in the executive committee. We said, on an item or agenda basis, we’ll be in a position to engage them and hopefully they’ll continue to support us either when we pass the budget or when there is a motion of no confidence against the leadership of this government.

JEREMY MAGGS: And that’s going to take a lot of deft negotiation and discussion. Would it not have been better to have the DA within the PGU [provincial government of unity] to give you more stability?

PANYAZA LESUFI: Let me start with the first part. It’s not going to be delicate because there is already some form of relationship with these parties. Take the EFF [Economic Freedom Fighters] for example, we have a political council that meets quarterly with them because we’re running either Ekurhuleni or Mogale City, Johannesburg and other municipalities. So it’s not a delicate thing. We just have to sense each other and deal with the issues.

The best option, obviously, was to go with the DA. I postponed the announcement of the cabinet twice to give these negotiations an opportunity. It was humiliating, it was embarrassing, but the price of bringing the DA was very important. Besides, we are working with them at national, it was not going to be difficult to work them at the province.

The differences were minimal, if I have to say it was just a difference of one MEC [Member of the Executive Council] position that we were prepared to engage [on].

When we deadlocked at the provincial level, we said, let’s go to our national leadership to assist us to unblock this deadlock. We then left the meeting to say we’re going to consult our national leadership after the final proposal that was put on the table by the DA. Before we can come back to respond to the proposal that the DA had put on the table, the DA left the negotiations, called the press conference hurriedly and denounced the negotiations and said there’s a deadlock.

Regardless of that statement that they held in the press conference, our secretary general [Fikile Mbalula] wrote them a letter to say, come back to the negotiation table. We still have [until] two o’clock the following day to come back to the negotiations. They didn’t come back. We extended that deadline from two o’clock to four o’clock. They didn’t come back.

It was on that basis that government can’t be kept waiting. Budgets need to be passed for teachers to be paid, budgets need to be passed for patients to get food and medication. You can’t hold government to ransom for that long, hence the route that we’ve taken. But the door is still open, and I still feel that we need to persuade the DA to come on board and resolve the issues that need to be resolved.

JEREMY MAGGS: So two questions then. How would you describe your current relationship with the Democratic Alliance, given that the party says you tried to strong-arm it and negotiate in bad faith?

PANYAZA LESUFI: We didn’t strong-arm it. The reason why I’m the premier today is a document that the DA developed. That document said, we’ll support you as a premier, we’ll support an ANC candidate as a speaker. You must support us as deputy speaker and you must support us as chair of chairs and give us three MECs.

As I’m speaking to you now, the offer of three MECs still stands, so we didn’t strong-arm them. We didn’t mislead them.

We kept to the document that the DA drafted and handed over to us to lead to the process of electing the premier, to lead to the process of electing a speaker. There was no way the DA can just vote for the premier without an agreement. The only problem came after electing the premier, the speaker and the deputy speaker, the DA came the following day when we wanted them to give us the three names of the MECs that we wanted to pronounce or the three portfolios that we wanted to allocate to them. They said that document no longer had a [locus standi] and we’re throwing that document [out].

That was the beginning of the confusion that led to where we are today.

If that document that they drafted and handed over to us stood, we would not be where we are. That’s the reason why we still feel we can still go back and engage on those matters.

JEREMY MAGGS: I just want to ask you one procedural question if I can. In terms of the new setup, you’ve moved community safety into your office. Why have you done that and how are you going to ensure that this reorganisation actually leads to tangible results?

PANYAZA LESUFI: Read the crime statistics, which province has the highest criminal activities? Gauteng. Read the crime stats, how many people are killed or kidnapped in Gauteng? How many cars are hijacked? How many women are raped, how many children are killed? And we still believe that we can use the normal processes of fighting crime. We’ve done that in the last 15 years. It didn’t yield the results that we need.

I honestly believe if there’s something this government needs to prioritise, it’s the fight against crime. You’ll never attract investment in the violent province that we’re in. We’ll never attract families who want to raise their children and ensure that their children have a better education in our province because anything can happen to their children. They can be killed, they can be kidnapped. You’ll never attract huge institutions to come and relocate their headquarters to Gauteng because of the high level of crime.

You go to all the CBDs that we have in Gauteng, all of them have collapsed, from Springs to Roodepoort. Go to Johannesburg.

I really believe that unless you prioritise, put in the resources, put in the skills and talent that is needed to fight crime in this province, we’re not going to do it and we’re not going to succeed.

I really believe I’m ready to take that responsibility. To be a premier is one thing. I think the priority that I’m going to have in this administration is to tackle crime head on and lead that fight personally.