A coalition government could help South Africa lift its game, said veteran Singapore-based fund manager Mark Mobius this week. South Africa's upcoming local government elections would be critical: "We and other investors will look at them very carefully and the degree to which officers and parties can gain and force the ruling party to enter into [local and provincial] coalition governments."Mobius, who was in Cape Town for a series of meetings, said that coalitions at local government level "would increase the dialogue with the ANC and hopefully redress some of the errors that have been made in the past".And the executive chairman of the Templeton Emerging Markets Group is not alone in his view.story_article_left1Iraj Abedian, CEO of Pan-African Capital Holdings, said that "if elections lead to a meaningful loss of electoral support for the ANC in some key metropole regions - for example Tshwane [and] Johannesburg [in] Gauteng and Nelson Mandela in the Eastern Cape - that would effectively force a coalition government between the DA and EFF, and possibly the UDM in the case of Nelson Mandela metropole".Coalition governments had operated successfully in Germany, France and the UK for years, Abedian said.If the ANC lost significant support and the coalitions were effective, the ruling party could face a similar problem in the 2019 national elections. That was assuming the ANC was incapable of stopping corruption and unable to appoint effective, capable people, he said.Business confidence in South Africa is at its lowest in two decades, and the country is teetering on the brink of credit downgrade to junk status.Said Mobius: "Sometimes, when you get a situation where the economy is doing very badly, growth is low, unemployment is very high - it's probably a good idea to have some change in the administration."South Africa is still recovering from President Jacob Zuma's surprise sacking of finance minister Nhlanhla Nene, which wiped nearly R200-billion off the JSE's market capitalisation."The fact that the whole thing had to be dealt with in the way it did in the first place is not a good sign. There have to be some fundamental changes that would prevent something like that happening again," Mobius said. As a result of Zuma's rash appointment of Des van Rooyen in December, investors were now monitoring the independence of the Finance Ministry, the central bank and the courts...