If you are one of the many South Africans who still think the 2024 election will take place with no fuss, the ANC will get its thrashing, and a new era of happy coalitions will take over, I have news for you. We are in for some very bumpy times.
As we can see in the City of Joburg, where councillors have allegedly been offered bribes to trigger a collapse of the DA-led coalition, many of our political hookups are incredibly unstable. As we have seen from Nelson Mandela Bay over the past six years, such instability will not go away merely because we wish it so. The problems coalitions create take years to fix. Sometimes, as has happened in NMB, they just trundle along in mediocrity. It is ordinary people, the struggling ratepayers, who are victims of these political shenanigans.
South Africans are generally very positive about the idea of coalitions. This weekend it was reported that a poll by the Social Research Foundation shows that almost 80% of all registered voters in SA are in favour of their political party joining a coalition when necessary. It said almost three-quarters of ANC voters will support it if the party decides to join a coalition. The poll, conducted in June, found that a total of 51% of ANC voters believe a grand coalition — made up of most large parties — would be a good idea. Among DA voters 68% believe it is a good idea and 58% of EFF voters think so too.
Sadly, for these supporters of political marriages, the balance and co-operation that these coalitions seem to offer are not a given in SA. Greed, hypocrisy, power-mongering and personality clashes have got in the way of many of these arrangements — and they fail.
So given what we have seen at local level, there is no doubt we will see pretty much the same dynamics at provincial level — and perhaps even at national level — given that coalitions will be a reality after the 2024 election. There will be tears. There will be betrayals. There will be collapses of administrations. We have been here before, remember: in 2020 the Tshwane council collapsed after the DA’s relationship with the EFF soured and the ANC repeatedly boycotted and walked out of meetings, leaving the DA unable to run things. The provincial government ended up stepping in.
The first key complication to consider about 2024 is that we will be entering something new in our political landscape: the presence of independent candidates.
The first key complication to consider about 2024 is that we will be entering something new in our political landscape: the presence of independent candidates. Now, MPs have still not finalised the Electoral Amendment Bill, which would be the basis for just how the introduction of independent candidates on the ballot will work. The deadline for that is December this year.
Even though it is not clear what the final product will look like, the reality is that unless there is clear lawbreaking by parliament (to stall passing the law) there will be independent candidates on the ballot paper in 2024 in some form or other.
With the introduction of the new electoral laws there will be so much more choice — and so much more fracture. Deals will be done not just with five or ten small political parties but with individuals as well.
That will present its own nightmares, where people with big egos and one seat will be able to wield enormous power.
Right now we have coalitions where small parties and big parties constantly accuse each other of not keeping their pre-pact promises. We have a system where small parties demand way more power and impactful positions than they deserve. At the same time, we have big parties behaving as if they have won clear majorities, when they have failed to fire up the imaginations of the electorate.
The field is full of hypocrisies and lies. There are parties which are proxies for individuals in the big political parties. These parties seem to have been formed merely to fight internal party battles from the outside so that they are not bound by the rules of play within organised party structures.
In the current coalitions, individual party members have even gone against their party precepts to vote “with their conscience”, even in matters that are not really of conscience. In many instances, it’s about raw power, about what the big party can deliver to the individual rather than any political programme.
This has led to the mess seen in so many municipalities. This mess will continue in Ekurhuleni, in Tshwane, Joburg, eThekwini and other areas where coalitions are in place. It means we face instability now, and we face further instability in governance after the 2024 elections.
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