EDITORIAL | Welcome to power, small parties. SA’s fate is now in your hands

The people have spoken in the local government elections, but it’s not at all clear what they’ve just said. The upshot of this is that we will have more hung councils this time round than in 2016, as many as 52, and that in many municipalities no one party has captured the loyalty or allegiance of voters in large enough numbers to serve as an acting majority. Potentially, it is a moment of great danger for SA, especially if one accords with the view that a widespread and growing disillusionment with politics could in the future give rise to populist “saviours’’, who reawaken these sleeper-voters. On the other hand, it is a moment of great potential.

While SA’s constitutionally defined political system is rightly criticised for putting too much power in the hands of party bosses, the inclusion of the proportional representation system in some way compensates for our not having a constituency system, in which representatives have to account to actual voters. When the constitution was written, proportional representation, which is widely used in Europe, was the unspoken sop to minorities, who would nonetheless be governed by a party chosen by a simple democratic majority.

Being South Africans with a disarming ability to explore the unintended use of things generally, proportional representation has been re-engineered and can be harnessed to narrow interests, ranging from the desire of a particular individual to get a public position, to the formation of an organised interest group whose assent may be vital in attaining a majority in a town council with many small parties represented. Their power is disproportionate to their support.

It’s similar to what the Americans call asymmetrical warfare, which was best exemplified in the Twin Towers attacks on September 11 2001, when terrorists used the equivalent of an Okapi knife to set off the chain of events that shook a superpower. A single seat can be as valuable as a dozen.

Minorities should not be able to hold the majority to ransom where it is clear that the legitimate interests of the majority are being sacrificed.

This presents the danger that sectional interests, perhaps articulated by a wealthy and well-organised minority, could be catered for at the expense of broader legitimate interests when votes are traded in hung town councils. Minorities should not be able to hold the majority to ransom, where it is clear that the legitimate interests of the majority are being sacrificed.

But how often will it be as clear cut as that? It is this proclivity for compromise, perhaps dressed up as bartering, that will be needed in the months and years ahead. The start of the horse-trading has seen party leaders draw their red lines for cooperation with other leaders, and it has not been an altogether encouraging beginning.

ActionSA’s Herman Mashaba has made non-cooperation with the ANC a standard of his party, and the DA and Freedom Front Plus have ruled out cooperating with EFF. The ANC in KwaZulu-Natal says any sort of partnership with the DA is unthinkable. The EFF’s Floyd Shivambu likes the idea of “loose coalitions’’ that can come apart if he needs it to over a single agenda item; the DA in the Western Cape wants written agreements. That’s a lot of lines in the sand.

The outcome of these elections suggests the ANC will battle to attain 50% in future national contests, and if that is the case coalitions will become the predominant form of government in SA. We’d best get used to it, and tap its potential to usefully include a wider spectrum of voices in decision-making. What one would like to hear is a spirit of true compromise among the political players and a commitment to putting the interests of the people first.

It could be an opportunity to forge the sort of partnerships without which SA cannot thrive and hope to uplift its people. But it will only be so if the politicians realise that the election results constitute faint praise for their performance thus far, and that the people’s jury remains out for now on whether our elaborate political system is worth the vast sums of money it costs.