Kingsley Makhubela | Tackling the 'foreign' coalition government dilemma in SA (City Press, 12 October, 2022)
Political grandstanding is a factor that should not be underestimated when looking at failing to reach out across the political divide and work in the interest of communities that desperately need essential services, a fundamental social contract between the state and its citizens.
The concept of coalition government is foreign to the South African political landscape. To this end, political parties are struggling to create or form coalition government structures with resultant negative consequences for the country’s political, social and economic stability.
The 2021 local government elections have exposed how the South African democracy is fragile and cannot deal with the coalition government in situations where there is no single party with the magical constitutional requirement of fifty-plus one percent of polls.
Hence, there have been talks of coalition governments, mainly in major metropolitan cities, where no single party could get the outright majority required to form a governing council.
Most importantly, all political parties agree that local government is the coal face of service delivery and decide on issues that bedevil local government, such as poor clean water systems, poor local infrastructure, poor sewage systems, poor electricity systems, rampant crime and unemployment.
A perusal of the dictionary provides many meanings to the word coalition; however, I find the following definition more relevant for analysing what is happening in South Africa.
Coalition is the action or process of joining with another or others for a common purpose.
In this definition, the word common purpose resonates with what political parties should endeavour to achieve when in a coalition government, mainly in hung municipalities.
Coalition partners keep their political identity even though they work with each other in governing a particular principality.
Coalitions work better in political alignments with common ideological convergence, like the right-wing or left-wing coalition. The right and left wings argument has empirical validity, given the examples of the Left-Wing Socialist Party (PS) in Portugal’s coalition, including Communist Portugal (PC).
The Socialist Party is a centre-left party in Portugal. The same can be said about the right-wing coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Germany.
To this end, the centre-right CDU coalition led a stable coalition government for many years.
The maturity of democracy in Germany has also ushered in what the Germans call the grand coalition.
This coalition enjoined the country’s two major political parties, the centre-right CDU and centre-left SPD (Social Democratic Party), to govern the country. The question is, however, will the grand coalition work in South Africa?
The reference to grand coalition in South Africa brings into the equation the two major political parties, the ruling centre-left ANC (African National Congress) and the opposition centre-right DA (Democratic Alliance).
These two major political parties have the required numbers to bring stability to some of the hung metropolitan cities in the country if they have the political courage and desire to do so.
The possibilities for the grand coalition and coalitions in the local government sphere present a unique opportunity for political parties to address glaring issues of service delivery that all parties identified in their manifestoes during the 2021 local government elections.
The common purpose is contained in political parties’ manifestoes. What is missing is the political desire and maturity to work together in the country’s interest.
The dilemma is that all the political parties want to address service delivery issues on their terms, even though they do not have an electoral mandate.
The logical thing would be for political parties to address issues pertinent to the electorates and the country. Failure to deliver services to the people will alienate the electorate and create voter apathy that will question the sovereign legitimacy of any government, now and in future.
The political consumption patterns of the country do not have a window of opportunity for compromise among political parties.
For instance, parties perceive the creation of local government coalitions as an indication of political weakness because they have their eyes set on the general elections in the next two years following the local government elections.
In this case, political grandstanding is a factor that should not be underestimated when looking at the failure to reach out across the political divide and work in the interest of communities that desperately need essential services, a fundamental social contract between the state and its citizens.
Failure of the state to meet its basic obligations will certainly lead citizens to take the law into their hands.
In protest, the rich may also refuse to meet their tax obligations, which is needed by the state to render the collective goods.
Furthermore, continued governance paralysis of some major metros will create a classical case for anarchy.
Political instability in the metropolitan cities of Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, Mogale City, Nelson Mandela Bay and, to some extent, eThekwini, compounded by allegations of corruption and maladministration, are indicative of fragile and state failure phenomenon.
Failure to form sustainable and predictable coalition governments in hung municipalities is likely to play itself at the national level should there be no outright winner in the 2024 general elections.
Predictions are, indeed, there will not be a party with a magic constitutional threshold of fifty-plus-one in the 2024 general elections.
Given the failure of the sustainable coalition in the local government sphere, the country faces the daunting challenge of ensuring it does not further degenerate into lawlessness and anarchy.
The German grand coalition model will provide predictable and sustainable governance for the South African situation, provided there is a political will between the two major political parties.
Indications are that the ANC and the DA will retain their dominant spheres following the 2024 general elections.
To this end, the centre-left and centre-right-led coalitions are impossible in the South African political landscape. The left has seen fragmentations since 1994 and is likely to see further rupture with the SA Communist Party (SACP) and Congress of SA Trade Unions’ (COSATU) intention to contest the 2024 general elections on a left-on-left platform (meaning left of the centre-left ANC).
Similarly, the centre-right DA has also seen political haemorrhage recently, such as the defection of senior members who formed ActionSA just before the 2021 local government elections.
Defections by some senior members of the DA do not inspire confidence, particularly during this period of political instability in the local government sphere.
The right-on-right Freedom Front Plus Party (FF+) (meaning right of the centre-right DA) also took a substantial number of votes from the DA during the 2021 local government elections.
Like the centre-left, the centre-right cannot marshal other political formations on the right, as vindicated by what is playing out in hung municipalities.
The question, however, is, what is the future of our beloved Republic? Is our state pushed to the precipice of failure because of politicians’ greed for power, and more power with no limitations?