Political coalitions can work but only where good faith agreements are made before elections – not after

WEDNESDAY’S Cape Argus featured an article by Keith Gottschalk, the theme of which was that South Africa’s coalitions constitute fraught politics.

He highlighted the mess in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro.

There, “the UDM (with only two councillors) and the Patriotic Alliance (with only one councillor) demanded, and got, the mayoralty”.

Thereupon, “the UDM’s Mongameli Bobani’s first action on becoming mayor was to demand lists of all contracts up for tender, and all vacant managerial positions”.

It is true that all of the DA’s appeals to UDM leader Bantu Holomisa to replace Bobani fell on deaf ears.

What Gottschalk omits to mention is the failure of Athol Trollip to deal with Bobani in a more appropriate manner.

When the conflict intensified, Cope was one of the parties asked to go through all the documents exchanged between Trollip and Bobani and to make recommendations.

I was one of the co-authors of that report. Unfortunately, neither the DA nor the UDM obliged in heeding our advice and the coalition collapsed. All of the failures of coalitions must not be heaped on small parties.

Big parties are equally to blame. They want to centralise power and call the shots.

Cope has been part of a few coalitions.

It has been a very stable partner. The reason for this is very clear. Every Cope representative is guided by the Constitution of our country.

At every conference, Mosiuoa Lekota pulls out his leather-bound copy of the Constitution and like a teacher and a preacher, copiously addresses the need to abide by the Constitution and to make it visibly work for the benefit of all South Africans.

In all of the coalition talks Cope never asked the DA to ensure that every Cope representative in every DA-led municipality be given a seat in mayoral committee member. There was no horse trading. There was also no undermining of the coalition led administration.

Coalitions do work.

The best chance for coalition success is to enter into a coalition agreement prior to an election, not after an election.

In 2014, Lekota led an effort to create a coalition of all opposition parties.

The DA was ad idem with all the other parties until Dr Wilmot James, much to his chagrin, dropped the bombshell: dissolve and be absorbed in the DA or do without the DA.

Reading Dr Wilmot James’s body language made it clear to me that it was Helen Zille’s ultimatum that unravelled the national coalition that was forming and set future coalitions up for failure in RSA.

Helen Zille is free to refute and rebut my allegation and set the record straight if I am wrong.

The future is uncertain because the ANC and the DA want the dictatorship of the party to prevail.

Inside both these parties it is incumbent upon public representatives to toe the line or be booted out.

The kind of freedom that I have as a Cope representative, most other party representatives can only dream about.

In Cope we put the people above the party and the Constitution at the very apex.

Right partners, adhering strictly to the Constitution in the letter and the spirit, can indeed make a coalition work.

FAROUK CASSIM | Cope Century View