It’s an unkind little twist of history that just as the ANC and DA coalesce in the centre, the DA is not interested in a coalition.
The public clamour for an ANC-DA coalition can be heard, and for many reasons it makes good sense. It is, certainly in the metros, the best reflection of what voters want, with the DA and ANC now almost the same size in Nelson Mandela Bay, Tshwane and Johannesburg. And, it would bring the most stability to the troubled sphere of local government, where even without a coalition it is challenging to make a success of governing.
Without one another, the two biggest parties would in several instances need to cobble together a coalition of multiple parties. These coalitions are difficult to manage, enable small parties to hold the council to ransom over sectarian issues, and can easily collapse without intensive management.
The DA’s position on a coalition with the ANC has been poorly communicated. The meaning of comments some time before the election by leader John Steenhuisen that the DA would work with moderates in the ANC, is one of the reasons people have hopes of an ANC-DA coalition. Another is the DA’s conduct in the previous local government arrangements, in which it teamed up with what many in the middle ground (most of us) would judge to be a worse option, the EFF.
What we do know is that arrangements with the EFF are not on the table this time. And, when I asked Steenhuisen this week to clarify his party’s position on the ANC, he was unequivocal: going into government with the ANC, would be “virtually impossible”.
“It is going to be very difficult for us to do anything with the ANC because they do not share our core values of nonracialism, respect for the rule of law, a social market economy and a capable state without cadre deployment,” he said.
“What we need to do is bring the ANC below 50% and then start to build a new majority at the centre. Nothing will change in SA unless we bring them below 50% because they would have no incentive to change their policy suite. It would be very difficult for us to go into government with the ANC in Tshwane or Joburg. But if they go down a Damascene road, who knows what can happen in future?” Steenhuisen said.
In politics, as in life, it is never a good idea to say “never”, and perhaps the DA will change its mind. It would not be the first party to do so. Patricia de Lille, for example, famously declared during the 2006 election that she would never support the ANC in Cape Town, but then promptly did.
DA federal council chair Helen Zille, who remains the thought leader of the DA, is more experienced than that, though. It is not likely that this is a case of the DA not having fully thought through the issues or playing hard to get.
Ironically, it is Zille who has talked about “political realignment” more than any other political leader. For more than a decade she has written about and championed the idea, which she has put at the centre of the DA’s strategic mission. Now that it looks as if the two biggest parties are coalescing, the DA wants to pass up the opportunity.
To understand why, look at it from a DA point of view. Going into coalition with the ANC now risks giving the ANC a new lease on life and legitimacy. It dilutes its most powerful weapon — the ANC itself and its constant and uncontrollable excesses. And the DA also suffered in this election, bleeding to smaller opposition parties and failing to win back Afrikaans-speaking voters from the FF+. An alliance with the ANC would increase this vulnerability.
For the country, this is a pity. The ANC, which has not yet decided whether it will choose the DA or the EFF as its main coalition partner — this is contested within the party — will have little choice but to go with the EFF. To be in alliance with the EFF is ill-advised for the ANC as the two compete for the same pool of voters.
An ANC-EFF alliance would also not be good for the economic reform agenda of President Cyril Ramaphosa, who would find it far more difficult to, for instance, liberalise the electricity supply market at local level. For these and other reasons, an ANC-DA coalition is best for SA, particularly in the short term. It is not the right choice for the DA. But which political party in SA has ever put the needs of the country above its own?
• Paton is editor at large.
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