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Legislation and national debate urgently needed to deal with coalition chaos
The debate around how to deal with failing coalitions needs to go beyond political parties - the voices of South Africans must be heard.
The multi-party coalition has welcomed the interdict for a special sitting of the Johannnesburg Council. Image: Supplied
The levels of instability when it comes to coalition governments in South Africa is becoming more of a concern every week, as one municipality after another fall victim to the chaos, backstabbing, and never-ending motions of no confidence.
Although coalition arrangements are a fairly new phenomenon in the country, many have been calling for some form of legislation aimed at regulating arrangements of this nature.
Two of the country’s biggest political parties have voiced concerns about the instability of coalitions in various metros and municipalities.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) and the African National Congress (ANC) recently called for a dialogue to be held.
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In his closing remarks at the ANC National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting on Monday, party leader Cyril Ramaphosa expressed concern about how unstable coalitions were undermining service delivery in municipalities.
Watch his comments below:
One of the country’s metros that has experienced the most instability has been the City of Johannesburg which has had three mayors from three different political parties.
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The DA’s Dr. Mpho Phalatse was ousted through a motion of no confidence shortly after replacing the ANC’s Dada Morero, who served for 25 days before being ousted.
The most recent mayor, Thapelo Amad from the Islamist Al Jama-ah party, succeeded Phalatse, when he was elected as mayor through the support of the ANC.
Amad resigned this week in the wake of calls for him to vacate office.
Debate needs to be taken beyond party politics
Besides Johannesburg, other metros such as Tshwane and Ekurhuleni have also had their fair share of coalition drama.
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An organisation that has been calling for the legislation, Good Governance Africa (GGA), said the main value of having a national dialogue on coalition governance is that it will enable those who are not directly involved in party politics to have some say on this critical issue.
According to GGA’s Pranish Desai, up until now, discussions about coalitions have thoroughly been dominated by political parties, with minimal external input.
“This has resulted in instability and incoherence in many municipalities across the country and citizens are increasingly frustrated by the effect this has had on accountability and basic service delivery too,” said Desai.
“Improving the legislative basis for coalitions as has been called for by the ANC, the DA, the South African Local Government Association (Salga) and the department of Corporate Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) among others, can help stabilise many existing coalitions across the country. However, it appears that a full framework will only apply from the 2026 local elections onwards.”
He said this means that more immediate remedies are needed ahead of next year’s general elections, which could result in coalitions at the national and provincial levels.
“Other sectors of society need to have some say on how they feel about how our existing framework around coalitions is failing us, and these sectors include business, the media, civic society and most importantly, citizens.
“Good Governance Africa has called for an independent commission on coalitions, formed out of these sectors, so that we can have more accountability within this debate and this commission could also help identify suitable frameworks for coalition governance at the national, local and provincial levels… ideally, such a commission would form out of an initial national dialogue,” Desai added.
Electoral system as a whole is broken
Political analyst Prof. Andre Duvenhage is of the opinion that the whole electoral system needs a complete overhaul, considering the Constitutional Court’s judgment on how to accommodate independent candidates.
“I believe the current measures signed by the president are not enough to deal with this issue. At the same time, it is also clear that the list proportional system or specifically proportional aspect also of the local government electoral system is bringing a lot of political parties in the process, creating patterns of instability where no absolute majority is obtained by a single party,” said Duvenhage.
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“It is absolutely necessary that we have some guidance in this regard, legislation and formal decisions with regard to coalitions, it should be structured in accordance with the electoral system, taking into account possible changes to the electoral system.”
ANC concerned about the 2024 general elections
“The ANC is in a way preparing to keep power even if they do not obtain a big majority and it is definitely a scenario, although they are working towards an outright majority,” Duvenhage added.
ANC NEC member David Makhura in his address to the media at the weekend, said the ANC was not resigned to coalitions, saying one of the reasons one cannot bank on coalition arrangements to fix the deep structural problems is because of many decades of apartheid.
He said there is a tendency to “romanticise” coalitions.
Another analyst, Prof. Dirk Kotze, says Makhura is treating coalitions as if it is mainly focused on local government, saying the problem with such an approach is that legislation is normally not retroactive. This means if they introduced it now, it cannot be implemented before the next local government elections in 2026.
“Therefore, it won’t solve the current problems experienced in some of the metros, and looking at next year’s general elections, the ANC’s official position is that they don’t want to talk about coalitions because they believe they can still win the elections. Therefore it will create a wrong impression that they already conceded there will be a coalition at national level,” said Kotze.
Convergence between ANC and DA?
Kotze also thinks there is a convergence between the views of the ANC and that of the DA, but the only thing the two parties don’t share is the ANC’s principle which suggests that the biggest party must have the opportunity to form a coalition government.
“On the other hand, the DA have said they will not work with the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), which I think is premature because a situation might arise where they will have to work with them,” Kotze added.
