A “defective leadership not only holds back the attainment of national objectives. It also presents a difficult conundrum for the movement, in that to rationalise its bad choices the ANC has to lower itself to embrace those defects of the leaders it has chosen as its own defects. Steadily, these defects of the individual leaders become, by default, the collective property of the organisation, its own blind spots and its subliminal attributes in the public imagination.”
These remarks, made by ANC national executive committee member Joel Netshitenzhe, have been widely shared on social media as the governing party was ousted from key councils and metros — including Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni (it has long lost Cape Town).
On November 1, in a clear message of discontent with the governing party, voters dropped their overall support to under the 50% required for it to stay in power on its own. This left the party’s chances dependent on the outcome of coalition talks. The turnout and results of the polls are widely seen as demonstrating the apt observations by Netshitenzhe in the quote above.
The party still believed it could snatch victory from the jaws of defeat at the negotiation tables, but its hopes were dashed as minority parties — some of them splinters from its ranks — ganged up to vote against its candidates in Ekurhuleni and Johannesburg on Monday.
This diverse coalition of smaller parties is bound together by one thing only: the desire to remove the ANC from power, especially in the critical urban areas where service delivery has deteriorated under the ANC’s decades-long misrule.
Ideologically the minority parties that are now in the driver’s seat have little in common. This is not a train smash — after all, local government should primarily be nonideological and only about the delivery of public services (refuse collection, fixing of potholes and bridges, timely issuance of trading licences and permits, and safe environments) to citizens.
The ANC, by its own admission, has failed dismally on this score, and it was only a matter of time before voters booted it out. And there were other own goals the party scored in the run-up to the November polls, including botching its list process (the selection of councillor candidates), a failure to make the deadline for registration of candidates with the electoral authorities, infighting (which sometimes took a violent turn, resulting in the killing of candidates), heavy reliance on the brand equity of the “cleanup” president, Cyril Ramaphosa, and withholding the names of mayoral candidates from voters.
With all these problems voters did not even give the party’s new vetting process (including educational qualifications for mayoral candidates) a chance. Now that the ANC has been sent to the opposition benches in many cases, the question arises: what can voters expect from these anti-ANC minorities? Is this a fresh start towards fixing local government, or just another false start?
The country has no history of successful coalitions. Most were wrecked by instability and constant wrangling among so-called partners. Among the many reasons for this failure was a lack of written and binding agreements. As with the past week’s coalitions, the post-2016 ones were glued together by dislike of the ANC and were led by the DA. Consequently, during the previous five-year term Johannesburg, Nelson Mandela Bay and changed governments several times.
The biggest winner in this week’s coalitions was the DA, also the 2016 winner. This raises the question of whether the DA has learnt anything from past mistakes in all of these metros. And the parties’ ideological differences should not be underestimated — these can yet scuttle any coalition government.
For a start, Julius Malema’s EFF and Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA believe all services should be provided by the state. Mashaba, a free marketeer, boasts about insourcing as many services as he could during his three-year tenure as DA mayor of Johannesburg as one of his successes in the country’s richest metro.
As well as believing in big government, the EFF also wants the nationalisation of banks and mines, and the expropriation of land without compensation. This latter campaign has stalled largely through disagreements with the ANC in parliament.
However, these are mostly national issues that are unlikely to torpedo the new governing arrangements. But the land issue in urban areas is likely to cause early tensions.
The first test of the cohesion of the arrangements enabled by ActionSA and the EFF is likely to come through allocation of key positions and spending priorities. Like the EFF, Mashaba — who failed to secure the mayoralty of Johannesburg this week — would like more spending to go to townships, where the collapse of public infrastructure and services has been worst. For example, swathes of Soweto, other townships and villages have been suffering from irregular electricity supply and water shortages over the years.
Ironically, the most difficult task facing minority coalitions will be to keep themselves intact. If they prioritise service delivery to the poor — focusing on their predecessors’ blind spots and subliminal attributes — they may succeed to hang on to power.
• Dludlu, a former Sowetan editor, is CEO of the Small Business Institute.
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