Political leaders, MPs, civil society and academics have gathered at the University of the Western Cape to discuss creating a framework to better run coalition governments.
SA has 81 hung councils and poorly managed metros including Johannesburg, which are derailed by coalition politics, frequent leadership changes and battles, with little focus on service delivery.
The presidency is convening the national dialogue, which will be led by deputy president Paul Mashatile.
If the ANC gets below 50% in 2024’s national elections, it will require it to enter into a coalition to remain in power.
Opening the event, UWC vice-chancellor Prof Tyrone Pretorius said the choice of the university for the negotiations was symbolic.
“It was here, at this centre, at the Dullah Omar Institute, where the interim constitution of this country was drafted. Justice Albie Sachs said this place was the “engine room of the intellectual foundations for the new constitution”.
It is not clear if the framework that will be hashed out will be ready before the 2024 elections, but a concrete framework and set of rules could support coalitions elected in the 2026 municipal elections.
Premier of the Western Cape Alan Winde said South Africans did not realise how important this event was.
“SA's democracy was a hard fought democracy. Lots of South Africans had this dream and a vision of a new SA, a rainbow nation. And many years into our democracy, we’ve got some serious issues that we have to deal with. So this is the platform to look at [them]. How do we make sure the next 30 years are going to be different to this and citizens are given these opportunities that they always dreamed of?”
He quipped that he was not looking for a coalition in the Western Cape, where the DA has the majority, but said the coalition municipalities in the province were the most poorly run and citizens did not get the service they needed.
Winde said the platform reminded him of the leaders who had gathered at Codesa, the dialogues to end apartheid that took four years.
“Our responsibility is to make sure that the dialogues are remembered in 30 years’ time as we remember the start of our democracy 30 years ago.”
He said citizens came off second best when politicians played musical chairs in coalition government. He called for urgent action to translate what was discussed at the negotiations into action and better governance.
Many parties and civil society have made submissions on how they believe a framework should work with parliaments. Brett Herron, a Good MP, said Good had made a submission to opposing some political parties’ idea there should be a minimum threshold of 1% of the vote before holding political seats.
“We will be drawing the line as anything that undermines the rights that are enshrined in our constitution, [such as] proportional representation and to the political rights of citizens. So when there are some structural things that can happen to support coalition governments to govern well, we will [support that],” Herron said.
Mmusi Maimane, leader of Build One SA, suggested changes needed to be made to improve coalitions.
“I think we've always got to expand the time of negotiations [for setting up a coalition government], The [current] two-week period isn't workable to form a new government.”
He said, “We've got to make sure all [coalition] negotiations are transparent in the same way as parliament. Third, we need an independent body to monitor coalitions.
He also said the public service commission needed to be involved.
“Because the state has been captured, [and] compromised... We’ve got a state that’s conceived around the ANC. Now we need to break that.”
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