Loose, unstructured co-operation between political parties could be on the cards in some key metros and in a number of local councils, as formal coalition talks between SA’s political parties hit major hurdles.
The EFF this week closed the door on supporting any ANC candidate for any position in any municipality across the country. This, after the governing party refused to accede to its onerous demands during gruelling coalition talks after the November 1 local government elections.
ActionSA meanwhile closed the door on co-operation with the EFF, while the Patriotic Alliance (PA) ruled out working with the DA, opting to ally with the ANC in exchange for key posts and the outright running of a Northern Cape council.
The DA has ruled out formal coalitions with both the ANC and the EFF. And the IFP has shunned the governing party in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), but is willing to work with it elsewhere.
The likely upshot is that parties will work together in councils on an ad hoc, issue-by-issue basis, with trade-offs across councils. It’s an unstable way of governing, but in the absence of formal agreements that give coalitions majority support in councils, parties will have little other choice.
The 2021 elections were historic in that the ANC was brought under 50% for the first time and a record number of councils (66) were hung.
Parties now have 14 days from the announcement of election results to constitute an administration, but council sittings look set to go ahead even in the absence of coalition arrangements.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has suggested that a failure to reach agreements could result in the rerun of elections. It’s likely a scare tactic for small parties, who put all their resources into the November 1 polls — after all, a rerun is not as easy as the ANC president may suggest.
Prof Jaap de Visser, director of the Dullah Omar Institute for Constitutional Law, Governance & Human Rights at the University of the Western Cape, says various scenarios could play out in the hung municipalities.
Importantly, he tells the FM, there is no legal requirement for coalitions to be formed. In other words, the work of a council continues regardless of whether there is a coalition agreement in place.
The dissolution of a council, which could trigger an election rerun, is only possible in very limited circumstances — as the Gauteng government found out recently.
An October ruling by the Constitutional Court on the dissolution of the Tshwane council by the provincial government set a high bar for such an action. It also took a dim view of councillors neglecting their duties with the sole purpose of collapsing their councils.
The ruling will make it extremely difficult for any provincial government to interfere in a council with a view to forcing a rerun of the vote.
"It can’t happen automatically, the suggestion that a province can simply dissolve a council and a rerun can be called is simply nonsense," says De Visser. Dissolution, he adds, can only take place in "exceptional circumstances", where nothing can be done to rescue the council.
It’s even more difficult for the national government to intervene in local government (this has been done before — notably in Mpumalanga’s Lekwa municipality — but only under extreme circumstances).
An ANC/EFF pact would have been the only way the governing party could retain pole position in Joburg, Ekurhuleni, Tshwane, Nelson Mandela Bay and eThekwini. But the EFF set lofty demands for working with the ANC, among them a demand for complete control of Tshwane, in exchange for handing Ekurhuleni and eThekwini to the ANC and the mayorship of Joburg to ActionSA’s Herman Mashaba. Its demands also included cancelling student debt, the nationalisation of the SA Reserve Bank and the expropriation of land without compensation within strict time frames.
EFF leader Julius Malema on Tuesday told journalists the talks had collapsed because the "ANC was not interested in saying anything, the ANC was only talking positions, not issues".
Malema said the EFF is going to disrupt the ANC’s attempt to govern any municipality it controls, and will prevent the party from winning Gauteng in the 2024 general elections. It will not vote with "any racist government", either.
"The door is closed, we are not taking any calls … no-one is going to be calling and telling us this is what the ANC is saying. It’s done; it’s closed," Malema said.
A letter to EFF secretary-general Marshall Dlamini from ANC acting secretary-general Jessie Duarte says some of the EFF’s demands were too onerous to meet within such strict time frames.
The letter, which the FM has seen, outlines the conditions under which the ANC will work with any party. These include that the other party is committed to transformation and stable government, is willing to develop a capable state without patronage and corruption, and supports nonracialism, gender equity and youth empowerment.
The suggestion that a province can simply dissolve a council and a rerun can be called is simply nonsense
— Jaap de Visser
De Visser tells the FM that the ambitious demands of smaller parties were among the factors derailing the post-election coalition negotiations.
His pointers for parties are simple: don’t overcompensate kingmaker parties, focus on the local and be pragmatic. But very few parties — bar the ANC and DA — set local conditions and keep their coalition principles simple and straightforward, he says.
The DA, for its part, announced it has secured agreements in Matzikama and Cederberg. At the time the FM went to print, the party said it was close to finalising talks in Saldanha Bay, Witzenberg, Breede Valley, Langeberg, Theewaterskloof, Cape Agulhus, George, Bitou, Namakhoi and Siyathemba.
DA leader John Steenhuisen said his party remained in talks to form governments in the metros, but admitted that the PA agreement with the ANC made this difficult.
DA federal council chair Helen Zille says it’s clear PA leader Gayton McKenzie is after positions and resources for his people, rather than negotiating on principle and on the basis of issues.
The DA is continuing talks with other parties, including Mashaba’s ActionSA.
What will it mean if there are no coalition agreements and parties proceed on an ad hoc, issue-by-issue basis?
De Visser says this is likely to lead to instability, given the poor record SA’s political parties have of working in formal coalitions, let alone co-operating within looser arrangements.
"They have to learn to compromise; it can’t be winner-takes-all," he says. "And it has to be about the voter."
Nordic countries have learnt over the decades to run successful coalitions, and pragmatism is paramount in that process, says De Visser.
SA now needs to begin thinking about developing its own political traditions around coalitions — which could become more formalised to bring some stability into local government.
"Maybe it requires legislation, maybe some regulation — for example, around giving the largest party the mayoral seat; who starts talks with whom," De Visser says.
This, he adds, should be done out of respect for voters, who have made it clear that they don’t trust any single party with power in these councils.
De Visser also weighs in on another possibility that’s been raised: to replace executive mayors with executive councils.
It’s a system that’s already quite common in KZN. There, all parties in a council are represented on an executive council and have a say in governance, and that council elects a mayor to run the municipality.
De Visser says this is how most councils operated pre-2000. But while it sounds fair and equitable, it can be unwieldy, as every decision can be scrutinised and picked apart by opposition parties with a say in governance.
It also requires a change to the system of governance in the municipality, which has to be processed by the provincial government and will take time. So it’s no silver bullet to the current hung-council conundrum.
What is clear is that SA has to start thinking about putting rules, traditions or even laws in place to regulate and guide coalitions and co-operation among parties — at least until parties have matured sufficiently to put the electorate ahead of their own members’ stomachs.
Independent political analyst Ralph Mathekga agrees. "You’d think SA’s political parties were negotiating for nuclear weapons at the UN, given the ridiculousness of their demands," he says. "They need to tone things down, and become more people-centred in their approach."
"What is also funny," he adds, "is they hate each other, but they hate being out of power more — so we may yet see some compromises."
As the deadline for the talks looms, it seems parties have forgotten the most important consideration: putting service delivery to citizens first.
The 2021 elections showed the effect this attitude can have on voting patterns. With 2024 around the corner, parties had better shift their thinking, or prepare to be punished again.
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