Tectonic shifts in coalition politics are happening across the country, creating intriguing party dynamics ahead of the most crucial elections since 1994.
The first sign of major change in the coalition landscape came in August last year, when EFF leader Julius Malema said his party was open to working with the ANC to prevent the DA from taking power nationally.
Then, in late January, a key EFF internal strategy meeting decided that the party would no longer sit on the sidelines and wanted actual power — positions in municipal councils. Previously, the EFF had been happy just to use its vote or votes to support or punish other parties as it saw fit.
In KwaZulu-Natal, the EFF cut ties with the IFP, ordering its deputy mayors in IFP-run councils across the province to resign with immediate effect and become ordinary councillors. This followed a breakdown in talks in which the EFF was pushing for a powerful role.
The IFP, which controls nearly 30 councils in coalition arrangements — eight of them in partnership with the EFF — vowed that it would not be held hostage by the EFF. The IFP said it was only at risk of losing “one or two” councils.
And then, almost as light relief, Carl Niehaus and others are moving to launch the Radical Economic Transformation Movement
The IFP’s national leadership told journalists that it had “shut its doors” on the EFF for good, though Malema said on Sunday that his party was not against resuming talks with the IFP.
The IFP also ruled out any tie-up with the ANC.
As for the ANC, secretary-general Fikile Mbalula made clear this week what the party’s approach would be towards coalitions: it will not, under any circumstances, form a government with the “right-wing” DA or FF+. It is understood that this antipathy to the DA has not always prevailed and that the two parties have in the past held talks over power-sharing in Joburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane, which came to nothing.
It might be short-sighted to take such an uncompromising stand on coalitions, but then it has been many years since any party has been accused of taking a visionary approach to the pressing issues facing the country.
DA leader John Steenhuisen said his party would not enter a coalition with the ANC “in its current form”, whatever that means. But Mbalula’s remarks, and those of others, indicate the party will stick with its coalition strategy of getting into bed with small, marginal opposition parties where necessary. That is, until its own support has shrunk to the point that it needs the support of a larger, more significant player.
This means an alliance between the ANC and the EFF is inevitable. They are already in talks over councils in Gauteng and exploring possible co-operation in KZN.
This was clearly seen in Joburg when the ANC and EFF ousted DA mayor Mpho Phalatse and backed Al Jama-ah’s Thapelo Amad to replace her.
Al Jama-ah national leader Ganief Hendricks, whose party has three seats in the Joburg council, has said the move had been the subject of negotiations with senior ANC leaders Jeff Radebe and Thoko Didiza for some time.
The talks were initiated by the Gauteng ANC, which is also negotiating with the EFF over positions in Ekurhuleni.
The parties that have drawn the ire of the ANC and EFF — the DA, the IFP, ActionSA and the FF+ — are likely to hold various coalition discussions of their own.
Small parties such as Al Jama-ah, the Patriotic Alliance (PA), the African Transformation Movement, COPE and the African Independent Congress will be courted as necessary by the bigger players to shore them up provincially and possibly nationally.
And then, almost as light relief, Carl Niehaus and others are moving to launch the Radical Economic Transformation Movement. Disgraced former ANC Western Cape leader Marius Fransman, too, is putting together a motley crew of rejects from GOOD and the PA, with the launch this weekend of his People’s Movement for Change.
And Jacob Zuma is trying to get back in the spotlight, emerging as KZN provincial chair of the South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco), or a faction of it. (His election was dubbed “bogus” by Sanco’s KZN secretary.)
No doubt the “terminally ill” former president wants to teach the ANC a lesson by taking it on electorally after his faction was effectively wiped out at the party’s national conference in December.
And former ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule suffered a decisive blow in January with the election of his longtime nemesis Mxolisi Dukwana as Free State ANC provincial chair.
Magashule has already made at least one appearance at an EFF rally; surely it’s a matter of time before he launches his own “political vehicle”.
The elections next year are set to feature a colourful cast of characters — but sadly many will simply lubricate the ANC’s efforts to retain power, without adding real value to the country’s fraught politics.
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