The government’s attempt to establish a framework for local government coalitions has encountered fierce opposition from the MK party, which said proposed legislation was an attempt to sideline smaller parties.
Besides seeking to provide greater stability to local government, the Municipal Structures Amendment Bill also seeks to introduce a 1% electoral threshold for parties or candidates to secure seats on a council.
The lines of battle were drawn when MPs were briefed on the draft legislation by Kevin Naidoo, the department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs deputy director-general for policy, governance and administration.
Public comment on the draft, which was published in May, was extended to the end of August. Naidoo said the bill would be processed by the cabinet and state legal advisers and could be submitted to parliament in July next year. Local government elections are scheduled for 2026. About 50 bodies submitted comments and Naidoo said the department was processing them.
The bill was drafted in response to a sharp increase in coalition-run municipalities, often with wafer-thin majorities that have rendered them unstable and affected service delivery. Among municipalities run by coalitions the number of hung councils has risen to 82 in 2021 from 29 in 2000, including 25 in KwaZulu-Natal and 18 in the Western Cape. The Northern Cape had 18 hung councils and Gauteng 10.
The often slender majorities of coalitions has led to small parties sometimes exerting a disproportionate amount of influence by playing a kingmaker role and securing important executive positions in exchange for their support. The City of Johannesburg, for example, has had seven mayors in the past three years, including Kabelo Gwamanda of the Al Jama-ah party which has just one seat on the council.
The proposed bill seeks to make coalition agreements binding and requires hung municipalities to shift from a mayoral executive system to a collective executive system, where all parties in the council are proportionally represented. It also seeks to limit the circumstances under which mayors and speakers can be removed through motions of no confidence.
The bill also proposes a 1% threshold of valid votes cast for a political party to qualify for a seat on a municipal council. Naidoo said more than 50 countries that have a proportional representation electoral system had introduced election thresholds of as much as 5%. In Turkiye the threshold is 10% and Denmark’s is 2%.
Naidoo noted that in the 2021 local government elections smaller parties with less than 1% of the vote got a total of 76 seats in the country’s seven metros. In eThekwini, 19 parties that received less than 1% of the vote and 8.4% in total secured 23 of the council’s 222 seats.
“Experience has shown that the formula as it stands favours smaller parties ... and those smaller parties tend to dictate terms to meet their interests at all costs. It has become common in local coalitions for kingmakers to claim the most powerful positions, such as the position of executive mayor or speaker,” Naidoo told MPs.
“The party or independent councillor with the smallest number of seats in the coalition can drive a hard bargain and demand to be rewarded with the most prestigious political office. This gives them a level of political power that has no relation to their electoral support. This goes against the spirit of democracy, he added.
“A multiplicity of small parties also causes fragmentation and makes the business of governing a municipality more cumbersome and laborious.”
While recognising that coalition arrangements were hobbling local government and affecting service delivery, MK MP Visvin Reddy attacked the proposed threshold, describing the bill as a “framework for manipulation” designed to keep smaller parties out of power and for the majority party to retain power. “It is not about stability. It is about silencing the opposition and centralising power,” he said.
EFF MP Hlengiwe Mkhaliphi said the threshold proposal could be unconstitutional because it undermined the principle of proportional representation. DA MP Cathy Labuschagne agreed on the need for a threshold but said its impact on proportional representation would have to be examined. Committee chairperson Zweli Mkhize asked how a threshold would affect independent candidates.
Mkhaliphi and ANC MP Dikeledi Direko were also opposed to voting for the removal of municipal office bearers being by a show of hands rather than a secret ballot. They said that could place councillors lives at risk for having publicly indicated their positions.
Naidoo justified this on the grounds that it would avoid attempts to influence voting in exchange for favours.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.