A neoliberal affair? ANC ‘may go for DA as partner’

The ANC and the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) seem to have identified the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) as a common enemy to be tackled as they pave the way towards tying the political knot and enjoying their coalition honeymoon after the 2024 election.

But political analyst Prof Ntsikelelo Breakfast, director of the Centre for Security, Peace and Conflict Resolution at Nelson Mandela University, said a coalition between the ANC and the DA would not work because they have huge differences, especially on foreign policy and black economic empowerment.

He said the two parties did not see eye to eye on the Israel versus Palestine conflict and the Russia-Ukraine war.

The DA also favoured the global north agenda while the ANC stood on the side of the global south.

“The contradictions are bound to cause a clash between the two,” he added.

He said the fallout between the ANC and the EFF was due to the EFF’s regular flip-flopping on policy matters, as well as its rude public behaviour which “did not sit well with the ANC elders”.

Another analyst, Dr Levy Ndou from Tshwane University of Technology, said ideologies did not matter in the formation of coalitions.

Ndou said there was no principle in coalitions in South Africa and that it was about what was in front of them.

He said parties do cooperate even when they were ideologically apart, as happened in the past between the EFF and the DA in the Ekurhuleni and City of Joburg metros.

“In South Africa, coalitions are not based on ideology. They are based on the situation on the ground.

“Political parties put aside their ideologies because they want to find themselves in close proximity to state power,” he said.

The ANC and the DA could cooperate to establish a national coalition after the election results were known.

Ndou conceded that the ANC’s image could be dented within the party should it enter into a partnership with the DA, but that was not an issue as coalitions were concluded by party top brass and not by the voters or supporters.

These views emerged as the ANC, through its national working committee (NWC) and the ANC Veterans League (ANCVL), is ready to dump the EFF as a coalition partner now and in the future.

The ruling party believe the EFF is a rogue element that has no respect for the rule of law and should be targeted and pushed out to ensure it comes nowhere near the levers of power.

Instead, ANC rhetoric indicated it favoured a coalition with the DA, complete with its neoliberal policies.

ANCVL president Snuki Zikalala made it clear the EFF was a no-no for forming a coalition with because the party had no respect for the rule of law and it despised the country’s constitution.

The ANCVL resolved at their recent national conference that the red berets were working to oust the ANC from power and were gunning for ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa.

The EFF had increased its anti-Ramaphosa tempo after the Phala Phala saga.

Although the issue was still under investigation by law enforcement agencies, the third-biggest parliamentary party had demanded that the president be charged criminally for the events that occurred on his farm.

The ANCVL has proven to be influential in ANC policy direction and its resolution on the EFF appeared to have been adopted by the NWC.

Like the veterans, the NWC, a substructure of the national executive committee, was already speaking about only forming coalitions with parties that the ANC shared common values with, such as respect for the rule of law and ethical conduct which, it said, were lacking in the EFF.

In an interview with Alec Hogg’s BizNewsInsider, Zikalala said the DA met all the criteria the ANC put forward for its preferred coalition partners, including respect for the rule of law and its record of service delivery.

This was an open admission that the DA was doing a better job in delivering services than the ANC and that the ruling party needed to tap into its efficient governance.

Now that the veterans favour the DA as a future coalition partner, the ANC could seriously consider adopting this as its official position at the next meeting of the national executive committee, the highest decision-making structure between national conferences.

But this could also wait until a process to establish a policy framework on coalitions as part of the current dialogue led by Deputy President Paul Mashatile was finalised.

Breakfast envisaged that the EFF could soon pull out of existing coalitions with the ANC due to the veterans’ league calling for the ANC to review its coalition arrangements with the party.