Mpho Phalatse, erstwhile mayor of Africa’s wealthiest city, was reinstated by the court in October last year after a shambolic motion of no confidence removed her from office.
It was a short-lived and pyrrhic victory.
Between October and this week, when she was ousted again, this time lawfully, there was little Phalatse could do to improve the decrepit state of Joburg, the country’s largest city and its economic heart.
Those employed by the city, insiders say, were keenly aware that Phalatse’s tenure as mayor would be short-lived, with the result that any governance in Joburg was “in complete limbo”.
In the council itself, that one-seat wonder, COPE’s Colleen Makhubele, frustrated any attempts by Phalatse to push through any real decisions.
This illustrates that Phalatse and the DA had lost the battle to hold onto the city long before her eventual ousting.
Now a three-seat party occupies the mayoral seat, in the person of Al Jama-ah’s Thapelo Amad.
Behind the scenes, it is the ANC and the EFF calling the shots — the pair are now inextricably linked in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.
In Gauteng, showman and public relations hound premier Panyaza Lesufi was behind the talks which resulted in multiparty coalitions led by the DA falling apart.
Smaller parties — such as COPE, Al Jama-ah and the Patriotic Alliance — have all been mesmerised by the lure of power offered by the larger players. And since the ANC and EFF are willing to share the spoils, provided they have access to the trough, it all works out rather nicely (for the politicians).
But these lessons about coalition politics are timely: they underscore that citizens cannot be passive recipients of the whims of the political elite
So what can we learn from this ordeal, besides the axiomatic statement that politicians care about themselves more than they do about us?
It’s becoming abundantly clear that South Africa’s multiparty democracy, in which smaller parties have always had their place, is turning in on itself as they taste power. And it’s coming at a cost to the citizens they’re meant to serve.
Will an Al Jama-ah voter, wanting an alternative to the ANC, cast their ballot for the party again, knowing that doing so simply means party bosses would become proxies for ANC puppet masters once in government? As for COPE, which split off from the ANC, it has a vanishingly slim chance of returning to parliament after 2024.
The one upside of these shenanigans is that they reveal, in technicolour, how our political parties are willing to sell their souls — and sell out their constituencies — for a seat at the table.
South Africans are slowly awakening to this reality. This year’s Edelman Trust Barometer of 28 countries, released recently, revealed that South Africans trust their government less than any other country, other than Argentina.
Here, trust levels in government sat at just 22% — less than half the global number — and at about a third of the 62% trust that South Africans have in the business sector.
But these lessons about coalition politics are timely: they underscore that citizens cannot be passive recipients of the whims of the political elite. Voters need to cast off their blinkers and realise it’s us who have the power to elect parties which focus on the people, rather than their own stomachs. If voters cannot see who the puppets are, dangling from the ANC and EFF’s strings, they have only themselves to blame.
Next year’s elections, mercifully, are just around the corner. And it is only voters who can usher South Africa out of the era of one-party dominance and into an era of mature, principled coalitions.
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