EDITORIAL | Be wary of coalitions, SA, and politicos, remember who put you there

It’s not only residents of Johannesburg who should be worried about the antics of their new opposition councillors, led by the ANC caucus.

If this is a taste of how coalition rule will work in SA politics, everyone else should be careful what they wish for amid predictions that national support for the ANC will fall below 50% in the 2024 general election.

To briefly recap: an attempt to hold a council meeting last week ended in violence, and a second attempt on Tuesday collapsed under the strain of an orchestrated campaign of disruption by opposition councillors.

The DA-led governing coalition, which includes ActionSA, FF+, ACDP, IFP and Cope, will try again on January 27 to elect committee chairs so the work of the council can resume.

Opposition councillors who have already shown their hand twice can be expected to employ more disruptive tactics unless they are called to order by their own leaders.

In the case of the EFF’s 29 councillors, this will clearly not happen. One of the party’s few achievements, besides running around the country inflaming toxic tensions, has involved tediously repetitive unruly behaviour in meetings and there is no reason to expect its tactics will change. 

The ANC in opposition is a less familiar creature, but what we have seen so far — especially in Nelson Mandela Bay — does not provide cause for optimism. In the absence of power and the comforts it provides, ANC representatives seem more inclined to emulate the EFF than to give the people who elected them a voice.

It does not help that the ANC remains so fundamentally divided that its leaders, from Cyril Ramaphosa downward, find themselves emasculated by the fear of putting noses out of joint. Instead, they tiptoe along a tightrope, making precious little progress, while the country cries out for confident strides towards the eternally elusive better life for all.

In the context of this depressing picture, it’s also worth remembering that the local elections on November 1 produced what was effectively a spontaneous mass stayaway of half of the people entitled to vote, most pronounced among the young.

University of Johannesburg (UJ) researchers reported in December that the reasons voters gave for withholding their ballot “are deeply suggestive of a particular form of disengagement from electoral democracy”.

Councillors such as those in Johannesburg, who will collect their R500,000 annual salaries regardless of whether they do anything in the next five years but sing struggle songs and throw bottles, might want to bear that in mind.

That a new organisation, ActionSA, which disdains the style of politics epitomised by the ANC and the EFF, did so well in November is a sign the ground is moving rapidly under the leaden feet of established parties. The evidence so far suggests some of them will be incapable of adapting and will therefore die.

This may end up being the best hope for the vast majority of ordinary South Africans who want nothing more than to work hard and raise happy families in a country which still has so much potential for growth and success.