'ActionSA councillors stay for pay'

The former speaker said there were no differences in how the party she has just left and Jacob Zuma's MK party were being run

- Lunga Mzangwe

Former Johannesburg council speaker Nobuhle Mthembu, who has left ActionSA, says some of the party's councillors are only staying in their positions for salaries.

She accused them of looking for greener pastures in the Democratic Alliance (DA) and other political parties.

"What I know right now is that ActionSA councillors are there for the salary they get in council and that's why they are still there," Mthembu told the Mail & Guardian on Monday after her resignation from the party last Friday.

"Should an opportunity arise for them to cross the floor to another political party, I can tell you now, they will leave. Even when we were in council, there was the opportunity where the Democratic Alliance had opened the programme where, if you want to be their councillor, you need to apply. DA councillors were telling us that our councillors had applied."

Mthembu said it would be interesting to see how many ActionSA councillors stayed in the party after the council was dissolved for the 2026 local government elections.

Mthembu resigned from ActionSA, citing internal dynamics.

In a letter to the ActionSA regional secretary dated 8 August, Mthembu wrote that she believed the party must foster open discussions, transparency and democracy, adding that despite efforts towards addressing these concerns, meaningful change had not been forthcoming.

"I wrote to the region about my resignation, but if you check the national, it was the one responding to it in a statement. Where is the region, where in the provincial leadership it is going straight to the national?" she said.

Mthembu said even during her time as caucus leader, the party did not allow her to make decisions about the caucus, with national officials doing that instead.