“Mandela for President” is the latest would-be entrant to the maelstrom of political parties springing up in response to the decline in the ANC’s dominance.
The new party’s attempt at registration was rejected by the Electoral Commission of South Africa. Its leader, former ANC MP Boy Mamabolo, failed to meet the registration requirements to form a political party — also known as a get-rich-quick scheme for mediocre and talentless outcasts. Former EFF and MK frontman Floyd Shivambu is “consulting” on the formation of his new outfit, Mayibuye.
The fragmentation of the South African political arena is under way, and Build One South Africa (Bosa) leader Mmusi Maimane warns that it is a recipe for political and social instability. He is not wrong.
The multiparty coalitions in local government and the associated instability are a painful example of this. The City of Joburg has had 10 mayors in eight years. The consequence is the near-collapse of services in the country’s highest-budget city.
Legislative interventions have been proposed to bring the number of small political parties in councils under control, through the introduction of thresholds. But there is doubt as to whether these will become law in time for the 2026/2027 local government election.
Maimane, a former DA leader who obtained his doctorate in governance and public management from the University of Johannesburg last week, is moving to bring together political parties to occupy what he sees as a vacuum being left by the ANC at the centre of the political landscape.
“The first thing to celebrate,” he tells the FM, “is that South Africa is moving away from the freedom narrative to governance questions, for the first time. No longer can we discuss ‘Amandla’ and the history of struggle.
“That was easy to do two cycles ago, even the last cycle of local elections. Today, the inherent and focal question is about how you govern, and how you govern in a way in which you deliver and grow the economy.”
Over the weekend, erstwhile liberation movements from across the region met for the Liberation Movements Summit — an exercise in nostalgia and an attempt to mask many of the shattered dreams that followed their rise to power.
President Cyril Ramaphosa bemoaned the threat to the transformation agenda, but paid only lip service to the crucial factors empowering naysayers of transformation — corruption and the erosion of credibility of former liberation movements not only in this country, but across the region.
“I frame it as a maturation from liberation to governance,” says Maimane. “The liberation parties got together this weekend. They would want to tell everybody that for you to be in the liberation party, you are being freed from something. They have an ideological framework.
“Now the discussion we need to have is that parties which agree on an economic framework to take the country forward must gather together to offer South Africans an alternative.”
The reality is that splinter parties from the ANC — such as the EFF and MK — are shifting the ANC further to the left, and towards the more populist end of the political spectrum. Maimane says this is out of touch with the views of the vast majority of ordinary South Africans.
A new movement must rise to reclaim the political centre once so successfully held by the ANC
A new movement must rise to reclaim the political centre once so successfully held by the ANC, particularly during former president Thabo Mbeki’s tenure, when the ANC received a two-thirds majority in electoral support.
“I think there are ANC voters who sit in the centre who need to think hard about who they vote for. If we give them the alternative, I’m convinced they will move across because the ANC in its starting frame used to be the party that could hold the centre.
“Now, it doesn’t because it’s been marred by too many misgovernance issues and it will continuously slide towards the left, because it has an interest in attracting EFF and MK voters back,” Maimane says.
A similar attempt was made ahead of the general election last year, when opposition parties clubbed together, though they contested the poll under their own steam. The DA-led process to form the multiparty charter ahead of the 2024 election was scuppered by Jacob Zuma’s black-swan entry onto the IEC scoreboard in 2024, leading to the formation of the current government of national unity.
Maimane also sought to bring together independent candidates under his Bosa umbrella for the 2024 election, and managed to win two seats in the National Assembly. Maimane envisions an initiative to unite political parties contesting the 2026/2027 local election, develop a strong economic offering to put to the electorate, and to come together under one umbrella, with a single name on the ballot.
This would effectively mean a host of parties collapsing into one. It is a gigantic task, given that very few political parties are really in it for the voters, but one that Maimane is pursuing. He says talks are in their early stages, but details will be revealed as the election draws closer.
Whether it will succeed remains to be seen, but Maimane makes a telling point: splinters from the ANC entering the system are unlikely to change much or shift the needle on South Africa’s dismal economic trajectory.
“There is no centrist organising group of political parties working together to create an economic model that will work for citizens. That is the dialogue we need to have. Come 2026 or 2029, as the ANC declines by whatever percentage it declines, we need to answer the question: where does that percentage go?
“If it simply goes to MK (as happened in 2024) or the EFF, all of these versions that [stem] from the ANC would end up governing [in much] the same way as the ANC. We can’t just keep saying, OK, the best solution we have for this country is to get ANC people to start new things all the time.
“The personalities and the colours of these new ANC splinter parties might change, but the politics and the governance remain the same.”
This marks the true disaster of South Africa’s post-democratic political trajectory.
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