Build One South Africa (Bosa), GOOD and Rise Mzansi have taken the plunge into consolidating the political centre, forming an organisation — Unite for Change — that is set to contest the local government elections.
The three parties between them hold only five of the 400 seats in parliament, but the move does, albeit in a modest way, reverse the proliferation of small parties on ballot papers.
While attempts to bring ActionSA into the alliance failed, Bosa leader Mmusi Maimane tells the FM efforts are being made to get other parties on board. What scuppered the recruitment of Herman Mashaba’s party was his demand for a greater proportion of posts, given that his would be the largest of the four parties.
“I would have loved for ActionSA to come through, and we engaged them extensively,” says Maimane. “There was a debate. First of all, the three parties went into it as equals. ActionSA wanted superior proportionality.
“Even if you were willing to concede on that, for argument’s sake, the question becomes what proportionality you are going to measure when an advocacy group or civil society organisation or professional body comes in. You can’t solve for just political parties, you have to solve for society. We had this extensive back and forth with them.”
Maimane says he has not lost hope and perhaps it is a case of “build it, [and] others will come”.
The three parties will continue in their separate roles nationally and provincially until the 2029 election. But they will contest the local government elections, due to be held between November 2 2026 and end-January 2027, as Unite for Change.
South Africa may at last be seeing a profound political shift. Regardless of whether the ANC remains at the centre of the country’s politics for a few more election cycles, the character of the opposition benches has never been more consequential.
The type of majority governments South Africa will get in this coalition era will be determined by who the ANC partners with, and whether opposition parties can form a large enough bloc to shift power away from it completely.
To be effective on a national scale, it will have to grow significantly
While the DA remains the second-largest party, its electoral support seems to have flatlined in the 19%-23% zone nationally. There is a move to re-energise it through throwing arguably its strongest asset, Helen Zille, at the Joburg mayoral race in the municipal election.
The DA could be making a greater impact in the GNU, but it is hobbled by weak leadership and restricted by the bounds of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s cabinet. DA leader John Steenhuisen is yet to provide a name to replace former deputy trade, industry & competition minister Andrew Whitfield, almost four months after his axing.
When the GNU was formed last year, the official opposition in parliament — the MK Party — briefly formed a “progressive caucus” with the EFF. But the appetite to work together dissipated after former EFF deputy president Floyd Shivambu jumped ship to join Jacob Zuma’s outfit. He has since been axed from it and has formed another party, Afrika Mayibuye Movement.
MK is partly populated by Zuma’s lieutenants who were in state-owned entities and the ANC during his destructive nine-year tenure as president. The EFF has proven to be weak and ineffectual in coalitions at local government level, making no significant contribution in Gauteng, where it is working with the ANC.
However, the EFF and Zuma’s party still command substantial support, and would be likely bedfellows for the ANC after the 2029 election. In polling conducted by the Social Research Foundation (SRF) a year ago, more than a third of voters supported the two parties, though a major portion of these were MK backers in KwaZulu-Natal.
“The data suggests that there is a critical mass of voters which, if they are dissatisfied with the performance of the GNU, could flip the balance of power in … favour of a future populist, leftist administration,” the SRF study says.
This bloc could draw further strength from the decision of the SACP to contest the local government elections as a party in its own right for the first time.
The SACP is deeply opposed to the ANC’s tie-up with the DA in the GNU and would prefer an alliance with the EFF nationally and in the provinces — despite the lack of EFF support in KZN, where MK received almost 45% of the vote.
The ANC is in trouble. The outcome of the 2024 national election — in which it suffered a 17 percentage point plunge in support — has failed to spur the internal reforms it needs. It sees the threat of further erosion of support but appears paralysed.
It merely repeats the same mantras about “renewal” that we heard at the past three elective conferences at least. These include lifestyle audits, the “step aside” rule for those under suspicion of corruption and a summons to the integrity committee for those accused of wrongdoing. The three measures are seldom implemented and when they are, it is with a lack of enthusiasm and/or consequences.
Rebuilding the centre of South Africa’s politics is a critical task, one that has now been initiated by Unite for Change. However, it has nothing near critical mass. To be effective on a national scale, it will have to grow significantly.
But it does have the potential to become a power broker in coalition talks after the local government elections. That could boost its national profile in 2029. However, voters might still see the small parties as a waste of their ballots, even if they are in a partnership.
The real test will be whether all the parties at the political centre — Unite for Change, ActionSA and the DA — are willing to put their differences aside for the sake of the country.
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