Letter from Cape Town: Idea of coalition politics gains traction

With South Africa’s next general election approaching in 2024, the idea that a new age of coalition politics is on the horizon for the national government is gaining traction.

Speculation around the end of one-party rule in South Africa went into overdrive in early July when seven opposition movements revealed they would negotiate a “moonshot pact” next month at a convention in Johannesburg to contest the ballot.

Led by the main opposition, the Democratic Alliance, the group said the 2024 parliamentary and presidential elections presented them with an “unprecedented opportunity” to remove the African National Congress (ANC) party from power.

“We believe the outcome [of the August 16-17th convention] could provide opposition voters with something they have never had before: the credible prospect of victory,” Democratic Alliance leader said in a statement. The opportunity John Steenhuisen was referring to is there for all to see in the national election results that South Africa has recorded for the past 30 years. The ANC’s share of these polls since the end of apartheid in 1994 peaked in 2004, when it received 69.69 per cent of the ballot. This dropped to 62.15 per cent in 2014, and 57.51 per cent in 2019, despite the presence of the popular leader, Cyril Ramaphosa, at the party’s helm for the latter vote.

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But it was the 2021 local elections which signalled that single-party rule in South Africa may well be on its last legs, with the ANC’s support nationwide dropping below 50 per cent for the first time in a national poll to 47.9 per cent. A variety of reasons are behind this decline in support for the ANC, including voters’ disillusionment with the party’s inability to deliver services effectively, tackle mass unemployment, and revive South Africa’s stagnant economy.

In addition, a steady stream of ANC leaders being accused of corruption – which shows no sign of abating – has hastened the party’s fall from grace. Only time will tell if the opposition grouping can hammer out a deal that allows it to launch a united front to contest the general election next year, but their announcement has sparked the imagination of ordinary South Africans disenchanted with the ANC.

Despite this, many political commentators and analysts believe the proposed coalition has little chance of success. Former ambassador to Ireland Melanie Verwoerd wrote in a column for the News24 website recently that to keep the ANC out of government, should its support fall below 50 per cent, would require “every single opposition party to join the coalition government – many without any chance of reward”.

She then went on to question the stability of a coalition. “Imagine the plethora of small parties which would have to be kept happy in order to keep them inside the coalition. We have seen at local [government] level that it is impossible and creates chaos and instability,” she said.

Political analysts Mcebisi Ndletyana also said an opposition coalition’s chances of winning power was slim. This is primarily because the Democratic Alliance will not work with the country’s third-largest party, the radical left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), because of ideological differences.

The more likely scenario, he mused, was that the ANC, which he still expects to get the largest share of the vote in 2024, will form a coalition with an opposition party to pass the 50-per-cent-plus-one-vote threshold it needs to secure another term in office.

“I do not see the ANC and EFF coming together [to form a government], as senior ANC officials have poured cold water on that idea recently. I think the more likely scenario is the ANC joins forces with the Democratic Alliance,” he told The Irish Times.

Ndletyana believes this could happen because people are desperate for stability, and the ANC and DA are centrist parties that converge ideologically on many major policy issues.

“The biggest problem all the parties will have when it comes to coalition opportunities that present themselves is the optics around joining forces with parties they vehemently opposed before the ballot,” he said. However, “in the end they will be forced to choose if they want to be in or out of government, which is a significant motivator for compromise”.