Ramaphosa has long been engaging Helen Zille for a coalition

The DA's federal chairperson, Helen Zille, has intimated that President Cyril Ramaphosa had long been in negotiations with her party about the possibility of a coalition before the decision was taken with the ANC.

Zille made the revelation at the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom on Wednesday night, a day before an ANC National Executive Committee meeting was to take place at the Birchwood Hotel.

Zille asserted that the new arrangement of governance was not a Government of National Unity (GNU) but a coalition between the two parties.

Speaking on a clip that went viral on social media on Wednesday, Zille also said Ramaphosa was looking for a better way to introduce the possibility of the two parties teaming up after the May 29 elections and was looking for a way to sell the idea to the ANC, of which he is president.

Zille said: "From the beginning, Cyril Ramaphosa came up with the notion of the GNU, which he thought would be a better way of selling the concept of coalition to his own party … Now of course, this is not the GNU because the GNU in involves all the parties which would include the EFF and the uMkhonto weSizwe Party."

Zille asserted that the GNU did not involve any other big parties but gave Ramaphosa an option he needed to involve the smaller parties by not seeming to be in a coalition with the DA.

"The truth is we are in a coalition because a coalition means that if a party withdraws from a coalition, the government falls," the clip continued.

However, holding a pre-NEC meeting that started on Thursday at the Birchwood Hotel, ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula lashed out at Zille, saying the "irritation" that was Zille was not to be taken to heart.

The ANC will have a three-day NEC meeting that ends on Sunday followed by a lekgotla, consisting of ANC officials deployed to government, that will end on Tuesday.

Responding to Zille's assertions, Mbalula said his party was not going beg anyone to be in the GNU and that if Zille wanted to leave it, she was free to do so.

"We are not negotiating with people with a cap in the hand. Even Zille, we are not begging her. If she wants to leave the GNU, she can leave but we have invited everybody to work together, and they have agreed, and we are working together ... So, let's not go up and down and fail South Africans about things that are non-existent.

"The fact of the matter is that nobody got the outright majority. The people said go, sit down and form a government and we have done that. So why should we argue that? Let's work for the people. But it does not mean that you suppress your political identity and what you actually represent," Mbalula said.

He said his party, with 40% of the vote, was the leader and no party would be able to make any decisions without them

"We are the leading party. We are the largest party. We are the greatest expression of people's will. We are not going to be engaged in polemics," he said.

"Stop being irritated by Zille every time she says she wants to see the ANC dead. That is her job and the DA's and all others who want to see the ANC gone. They say eat the elephant piece by piece but the elephant is still standing. The ANC will go down if it entertains the irritation and doesn't do what is right," he said.

Mbalula took a swipe at Arts and Culture Minister and Patriotic Alliance leader Gayton McKenzie after a squabble involving his deputy, Peace Mabe, over her comments on banning Israel from participating in the Olympics in Paris.

"We know that Gayton has a position and he supports Israel. That is not something new, so he has to say that he needs to be consulted.

"But the government policy is that we are in solidarity with the people of Palestine and we recognise the Israeli state as an apartheid state," said Mbalula.

Opposition parties outside the GNU had a field day yesterday, particularly the EFF, saying they were vindicated by the public spat between the ANC and the DA.

The EFF said in a statement it had been correct in asserting that the DA-ANC coalition was engineered by the white capitalist establishment through the manipulation of the rand.