National coalition government would be disastrous for SA
The disproportionate power given to smaller parties in coalition politics creates chaos in local councils. Extrapolating this untenable scenario to national level would be utter madness
A month of bittersweet local governance mayhem for SA’S two largest political parties saw the ANC lose the Nelson Mandela Bay (NMB) metro to the DA and the ANC grab the Johannesburg metro from the DA.
The NMB metro has not known stability since the DA wrested it from the ANC for the first time in 2016 through a coalition with small parties.
The Johannesburg metro was momentarily steady after the ANC engineered a collapse of the DA coalition in 2019.
The DA regained the metro after the 2021 local government elections, and went back to the ANC last month. On Tuesday, the ousted DA mayor was reinstated by court order.
Changing hands three times in three years once through an election process and twice through a collapse of coalition governance.
And on Wednesday the dreaded motion of no-confidence axe hovered above Ekhurhuleni’s DA mayor (the result of which was not known by time of print). The municipal governance fiasco continues to unravel in the midst of service delivery deficiencies across the disputed metros.
The unpredictability of local governance has brought paralysing instability to municipalities, particularly metros.
Abrupt modification of the executive committee, overhaul of mayoral committees and sudden change of policy direction with every new coalition is a huge source of dysfunctionality in the contested metros.
The plurality of political parties is celebrated as truly representative and often hailed as a reliable indicator of a healthy democracy.
We need to reflect on this assertion and apply our minds to how a multi-party local government is set up to fail by the mismanagement of the coalition facility by political parties.
It is imperative that in the active promotion of democracy we continuously endeavour to modify its institutions to insulate it from manipulation.
Coalition governance is a constitutional output of the Municipal Structures Act 117 of 1998 that allows council members to elect a council speaker (section 36), remove a council speaker (section 40), elect an executive mayor (section 55) and remove an executive mayor (section 58).
Both election and removal of these key office bearers need a majority vote from council members.
Election of mayor and speaker indirectly by council members rather than directly through the public ballot, together with the composition of the mayoral committees (section 60) as appointed by the mayor, are the major sources of instability for coalition governments.
Coalition governments have reduced the composition of mayoral committees, a pivotal structure in local governance, to a mere reward initiative to coalition partners.
The generosity or rather desperation of contesting parties combined with the instinctive opportunism of small parties has diminished the mayoral committee to a token of appreciation and legitimate kickbacks of democratic processes.
Governance inexperience of small parties is a huge concern when they are parachuted into big governance roles as mayoral committee members.
The mayoral committee is the inner circle of the mayor. It should be a rich deposit of experience, competency and integrity.
While a few candidates recruited from small parties may be professionally competent individuals, their inexperience defeats their case.
Local governance space does not require chancers but tried and tested individuals with a proven track record in public leadership.
It is a huge bet to expect the new recruits to stand with principle in the way of municipal finance predators when they come for council funds with dodgy tenders and unscrupulous contracts.
Coalition governance throws accountability of elected council members into jeopardy.
The political task of the voters is to elect a representative through a political formation of their choice and periodically hold the elected representative accountable to mandate.
When elected council members decide to pass on the mandate of their constituencies to another party, how will the voters hold them accountable?
How do they report back to their constituencies when they have passed the baton?
In its negotiations with the DA coalition in Ekhuruleni, the EFF proposed that coalition partners reward it with provincial legislature committee chairs for its vote in three Gauteng metros.
Effectively the EFF would have traded its authority in council to the coalition and the voters who voted for the EFF are now without representation.
Notwithstanding the political gain of receiving legislature committee chairs, council voters have been abandoned.
How is the EFF going to account to its constituency when it has traded its seats to the coalition outside consultations with its voters?
The assertion that the political organisation of the mayor leads the coalition is a huge distortion of coalition reality.
There is no leader in alliance politics. Coalition members cannot be led, particularly the small parties. They are ungovernable.
They hold coalition governments to ransom due to their potential to collapse the coalition by walking away.
This leads them to act unreasonably.
The margin of coalition victory in NMB was one; in Johannesburg the winning coalition attained a plus-four majority. Coalition arrangements are too fragile and that makes it difficult to discipline wayward partners or coerce them into policy agreement.
How political parties with less than 10% of votes have so much power and how the ANC struggles to control Gauteng metros after accumulating the most votes affirms the madness of coalitions.
Coalition governments disrupt power allocation in council by misallocation of disproportionate power to small parties.
Council members derive power from voters.
Power in council should only be determined by the number of voters a political formation accumulated.
Any power allocated outside of the electoral process is tantamount to circumventing the democratic process.
The putting together of coalition governments makes a curious case.
In NMB, the DA had the support of the PAC when it unseated the Anc-led coalition. The PAC was rewarded with a mayoral committee slot.
The reason political formations do not enter into coalitions before the election is that they are aware their members will not approve of some of these outrageous entanglements.
To circumvent the consent of membership, they choose coalition partners after the election. This is dishonesty and equivalent to duping voters.
Political formations are assembled on ideology and policy preference.
Members of the public join political formations attracted by ideology.
For political formations to choose coalition partners across their ideology without the consultation of their members is tantamount to political representation overreach.
This overreach by elected representatives extends to prejudice voters by elevating elected council members from delegates of voters to trustees of voters.
Council members are delegates to council and carry the mandate of people.
Voters vote for their parties to govern, not to be in coalition.
When their parties lose the election and are not in a position to govern, they must come back to take a new mandate from the voters on coalition choice.
A decision as huge as deciding allocation of power in council cannot be unilaterally taken by council members without the consent of voters.
By logical extension, the coalition governments brokered by elected council members without the explicit consent of voters are not “legitimate” local governments.
South African political discourse has been polluted by aggressively toxic political formations that harvest the socioeconomic frustrations of the poor.
Small parties do not hesitate to make outrageous promises to the electorate in a desperate hunt for votes.
An assessment of the manifestos of the political parties composing these mayoral committees exposes an unreconcilable disjuncture of ideology and policy preference.
There is little to zero prospect for council policy equilibrium.
South African local government is infested with legislative individualism.
Political formations are hell bent on delivering on specific promises made to their voters to secure re-election.
This conduct exacerbates the risk of policy disequilibrium. The priorities of coalition partners are too diverse to consolidate.
There is no doubt that coalition governance is an unstable arrangement in local governance, particularly with the bigger municipalities.
Failure of coalition governance to achieve stability in metros evokes a conversation on its fitness for the South African political discourse and suitability for national governance.
Political formations are hell bent on delivering on specific promises made to their voters to secure re-election. This conduct exacerbates the risk of policy disequilibrium. The priorities of coalition partners are too diverse to consolidate
It is neither doomsaying nor alarmist to extrapolate the disorder being caused by coalition governance in local government to fear the worst havoc with a national coalition government.
With the ANC predicted to fall beneath the 50% mark in 2024, a national coalition government is a huge reality.
It will be improvident of stakeholders to ignore the red flags of coalition governance and allow it to continue.
The impatience to govern by minority parties will wreak unprecedented havoc in national government.
Constant national government uncertainty will be catastrophic to the economy. An unceremonious collapse of a national government coalition would be disastrous for SA.
National parliament has 13 opposition parties.
At national government there is a lot to incentivise a coalition government. Opposition parties are just waiting for the ANC to drop into sub-50%.
Smaller parties have abandoned any ambition to grow until they govern, they are fine with coalition governance.
Lucrative rewards with less scrutiny. Who has ever blamed the APC or COPE for service delivery collapse in any of the coalitions?
The mayoral committee reward system will be replaced by cabinet posts. It is difficult to imagine progress in a cabinet led by a DA leader with an EFF minister of justice and a PAC minister of human settlements.
In provincial legislature, coalition partners will appropriate MEC posts between themselves as they please. At head of department level, there will be commotion as each coalition MEC will seek to arrive with his/her own HOD.
It is time to objectively assess the record of coalition governance using the experience of metros and agree that it is not for the big stage.
It is time to be realistic with the future of national politics and admit the misfit of coalition governance at national level.
The Local Government: Municipal Structures Act 117 of 2000 together with the Municipal Electoral Act 27 of 2000 should be revisited and allow a new process to elect mayor, speaker and the constituting of mayoral committee members.
Either mayor and speaker are elected directly through the ballot or a predetermined formula put in place to allocate the positions of the executive.
All room for collusion by political parties should be eliminated.
Let the people make their choice directly.
Mayoral committee members can be converted to the equivalent of parliamentary oversight committees. Council heads of departments who are permanent employees can report directly to the mayor.
The oversight committees can be utilised to hold both the mayor and HODS accountable.
At national level, section 83 of the constitution together with the Electoral Act 73 of 1998 should be revisited and allow for a direct election of the president through the ballot. Let the people directly choose their national leader.
These are major but necessary changes to our democracy. Coalition governance is not compatible with the South African political discourse.