Many voters are becoming increasingly sceptical and concerned about coalition governments at local level. Apart from Mangaung and Buffalo City, every other Metro Council – and dozens of other town councils have coalition administrations, many of them working very well. Some not well.
If opinion polls are to be believed and with by-election trends that consistently show ANC slippage, it is becoming clearer that coalition governments at all levels, from town councils, to city councils, to provincial administrations and the national government are either here to stay or on their way in.
Paul Mashatile, a will-he-or won’t he aspirant for the Presidency of our country, has been told by the EFF that if he becomes the president, the EFF will be prepared to go into coalition with the ANC. Mashatile must be careful, the last person clasped to his bosom by Julius Malema, Herman Mashaba, became known during his term as mayor of Johannesburg as the EFF mayor. That did him no favours. Mashatile might find it a burden to be known as the EFF president of South Africa. This is especially so if the stability of his administration is dependant on keeping the EFF sweet and happy.
Despite all of this, it is a fact that South Africa is moving closer – not further away from—coalitions at every level of government. And the alternatives to an ANC majority (or multi-party coalition) is in every case another coalition because no-one has a majority and on-one is likely to be given a majority at the next election. In some cases, the alternative to the current multi-party coalition led by the DA, is a multi-party coalition led by the ANC, dependant on the EFF.
The real problem is that several of the coalitions do not have a majority administration; they are forced to run minority governments. They become fragile and vulnerable when some of the smaller parties try to be both government and opposition at the same time, placing the development of their own party first, by denigrating, undermining and slagging off their coalition partners.
The DA, as South Africa’s second largest party, is a favourite target of some of its own partners who have vaulting ambitions and little loyalty to coalition agreements they have signed, or to the voters who clearly signalled at the last election that they wanted a change from the one-party domination of the past generation.
An even more significant threat to coalitions is when some of the smaller parties (by no means all) seem to have very relaxed principles. In return for positions on the Mayoral Committees, or Portfolio chair posts, some councillors care little about the voters but have a healthy regard for their own promotion to posts carrying higher salaries. This makes for instability, policy indecision and municipal staff not knowing whose instructions to carry out.
Despite all of this, there will be many more coalitions at every level and South Africa will have to learn how to manage them successfully in the interests of the people represented. It is not surprising that there are teething problems: our country has not had coalition governments for most of the period since 1910.
It will take imagination, intelligent management, detailed coalition agreements, and a spirit of co-operation between people of differing political views if the current mess that exists in the public governing sphere is to be succeeded by the type of stable, responsible coalition that has been such a success in many other parts of the world.
Douglas Gibson is a former opposition chief whip and former ambassador to Thailand
This article first appeared in The Star newspaper.
