Parties to visit Denmark to study coalitions
OPPOSITION parties are poised for a coalition government come 2024 with some calling for rules and regulations to be thrashed out before South Africans head to the polls.
With opinion polls predicting that the ANC could obtain less than 50% support in the upcoming national elections, measures are already being put in place to prepare political parties for possible coalition governments.
So much so that parties, including the ANC, are set to embark on a study tour to Denmark next week to investigate coalitions.
Though the ANC has previously said coalitions were not in the party’s vocabulary the opposition parties said it was time that the former liberation movement accepted that it may not obtain an outright majority.
Despite the ongoing collapse of political unions playing out across the country’s municipalities, the parties said they were unfazed by this and what it could mean for the longevity and sustainability of coalitions at a provincial or national level.
The City of Joburg is currently in a stalemate after a motion of no confidence was passed against the speaker, Vasco da Gama, with the help of councillors from within the Da-led coalition.
A Cope councillor, two of the three ACDP councillors and one of the seven IFP councillors failed to toe the DA line and instead supported the ANC, EFF and other parties including the UDM, ATM and Al Jama-ah.
Allegations of bribery have since been made and cases have been opened with the police.
Power has also changed hands a number of times in Western Cape municipalities less than a year after local government elections – due to a shift in alliances.
Actionsa president Herman Mashaba said to ensure the success of the coalition in 2024, political parties needed to hold their deployees accountable.
One of Actionsa’s councillors failed to attend the City of Joburg council meeting and when the councillor could not prove he had suffered a heart attack on the day of the meeting the party parted ways with the councillor.
“While we have dealt with our councillors we don’t know what the other parties have done about their councillors. This is about parties ensuring that there are consequences for not respecting the law,” Mashaba said.
He said Actionsa would not work with the ANC and the EFF but was open to entertaining other parties.
“We don’t even want to sit around the table with them, we would rather call for an election rerun (in 2024). The ANC is a criminal organisation and we can’t work with criminals.
“We are working hard to ensure that we don’t depend on the EFF at national level. We are happy to work with the EFF at local level,” Mashaba said. UDM president Bantu Holomisa said all political parties knew they needed to ready themselves for a coalition government in 2024.
“We cannot be caught off guard. We have to know what we are getting into,” Holomisa said.
He said existing legislation did not cater for a coalition government to be formed and this needed to be looked into.
Holomisa said this included the rules about how long the winning coalition would be given to form a government.
“There must be some kind of guidelines for when there is a coalition government (so that coalition parties) are given a few months to form a government as opposed to being given 14 days to negotiate,” Holomisa said.
“You can’t negotiate in just 14 days, you need a maximum of three months while the government continues until a (new) government is formed.
“It’s these nitty-gritties that we need to sort out.”
Meanwhile, the Patriotic Alliance’s national chairperson, Marlon Daniels, said they were not desperate to form a part of the government in 2024 as they would concentrate on installing their leader, Gayton Mckenzie, as state president.
DA Federal Council chair Helen Zille said the type of government forged in 2024 depended on the voters. “We will evaluate the result and seek to achieve the ‘least bad outcome’,” Zille said.
“The best option (for South Africa as a whole) is for the DA to get an overall majority and provide good, clean, delivery-oriented government. But that is not always possible,” Zille said.
She said the situation was exacerbated by there being no threshold for parties to reach to get representation.
Political analyst Professor Andre Duvenhage said the polls predicting the ANC would dip below 50% and just over 40% were interesting.
“What is clear is that the implosion of the ANC is stronger than what opposition parties can absorb at the moment and the result is high levels of political apathy. That will continue,” Duvenhage said.
He said he did not foresee Actionsa growing to become the “big net that will rescue South Africa” while other parties such as the EFF had reached their ceiling.
Meanwhile, the development of niche groupings such as the FF+, IFP, ACDP, and PA made the scenario of a coalition at national level even more likely.