As South Africans ready themselves for the upcoming elections, there is much talk of coalitions of political parties emerging amidst the prospect of the ANC failing to win an outright majority.
Current polls predict that the African National Congress (ANC) may win less than 50% of the votes which would necessitate the formation of a coalition government.
According to commentators while coalitions can work, they require ongoing stability to prevent delays in decision making. To achieve this, parties are forced to find middle ground which could erode their individual identities.
Political analyst Professor Levy Ndou,said the biggest challenge to coalitions in South Africa was the inability of parties to work together.
Ndou said the majority of municipalities that were in coalition were failing because they were characterized by instability.
“The lack of cooperation among political parties in the municipalities should be blamed for coalition failure, but generally coalitions work.
“Remember we have about 70 municipalities that are run by coalitions and they are working. As I said, the biggest challenge we have is the instability of coalitions (mainly) in the Metros, hence we talk about Nelson Mandela, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane
“When one looks at these municipalities, they are characterized by instability, conflicts and the constant change of political leadership which in turn affects service delivery”.
Citizen’s forum spokesperson, Dennis Bloem, said coalition governments would not work until political leaders changed their mindset because all the political party leaders wanted to be the president.
“The biggest problem is position; no leader wants to be below or report to another leader. This won’t work, it will be chaos,” he said.
Bloem said the answer lay in adopting the late President Nelson Mandela’s model of a Government of National Unity (GNU), like the one adopted in1994.
This was because a GNU sought to bring all parties that had representation in parliament on board.
“In a Government of National Unity you bring all political parties together with the biggest and the ones with presence in the parliament. In so doing there won’t be any infighting in that you are able to give every leader a responsibility, and that will bring stability,” said Bloem.
In the 2019 election, the ANC’s percentage dropped to 57% compared to the 69% votes it garnered in the 2014 elections. In the 2021 local government election, the ANC again experienced a decline in votes, 47.7% . These figures indicated a discernible decline of support for the ANC.
With the emergence of the newly formed Jacob Zuma supported Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) party, many predict that the ANC would lose further support as some of its members have already joined MK, and some ANC supporters will likely vote for the new party.
Saturday Star