Opposition parties say they are ready to put their political ideologies aside and make a collective effort to topple the ANC at next year’s general elections.
Leaders of the DA, IFP, Freedom Front Plus (FF+), ActionSA, United Independent Movement (UIM) and the Spectrum National Party (SNP) have been holding marathon meetings over the past three months to lay the groundwork for an opposition coalition.
The opposition parties’ national convention will be held in Kempton Park at the same venue that hosted the Convention for a Democratic SA (Codesa) negotiations. It is scheduled to take place at Emperor’s Palace from Wednesday and Thursday.
Among other things, the convention will discuss the values and principles that will guide a pact government, rules of engagement during the election campaign, and formulas to form cabinets after the 2024 election.
The DA is rallying opposition political parties around its “moonshot pact”, which is aimed at unseating the ANC in 2024. Several polls, including one by the ANC itself, suggest the governing party’s electoral support could fall below 50% in the upcoming elections. But none of the opposition parties is strong enough to topple the ANC on its own.
These polls have galvanised SA’s fractious opposition to seriously consider formulating coalitions to defeat the ruling party.
The moonshot pact was necessitated, among other things, by the instability in coalition-run municipalities, which make it difficult to approve budgets and pass council items. There are 81 hung municipalities and metros in SA, with infighting and frequent leadership changes undermining service delivery.
Thus far, coalitions created by opposition parties to run metros in Gqeberha, Tshwane, Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni have constantly been rocked by infighting for positions.
Acting in SA’s best interests
“We are looking forward to the next two days to be fruitful. We are approaching this national convention with an open mind, because coalitions are about negotiating and making compromises in the best interest of the country,” IFP president Velenkosini Hlabisa said on Tuesday.
Hlabisa said discussions at the convention would centre on the country and its people. “We are ready for engagements with other political parties to express our views and find common ground. We have a common interest for the country and the people of SA.”
ActionSA national chair Michael Beaumont said his organisation was looking forward to the convention mostly because “the people of SA want this [coalition] agreement”.
“We have put out communication about how many South Africans are in support of this process … There’s been a lot of progress achieved over many weeks.”
Beaumont said they were counting on the “political maturity and wisdom of political parties to act in the best interests of all South Africans”.
“We are very much happy with the ground work. There were 12 meetings over the last three months between party leaders to lay foundation work for the convention,” said a DA leader, who did not wish to be named.
Prof Ntsikelelo Breakfast, Nelson Mandela University political analyst, said the “fragmentation of the political spectrum and a lack of majoritarianism” created the scope for the national convention.
We are ready for engagements with other political parties to express our views and find common ground. We have a common interest for the country and the people of SA.
— Velenkosini Hlabisa, IFP president
Coalition formations, he said, tended to be instituted by political elites without developing conflict management to deal with internal contradictions.
“The question is: will there be a mechanism to manage those contradictions?” Breakfast said. He said his other concern is that the current coalitions did not emerge from a democratic process. “One might vote for the ANC and might not necessarily want the ANC to join forces with another party, and vice-versa.”
Elections expert Wayne Sussman echoed the words of Breakfast, saying it could prove difficult for the opposition parties to agree on the leadership of the “moonshot pact” or who should become its face. Already, the country’s third-largest opposition party, the EFF, is not part of the talks.
Political analyst and coalitions expert Levy Ndou said: “This pact is against the ANC and EFF in particular. Steenhuisen has said they want to stop the ANC and EFF. So, they are not invited; it’s a pact to fight against them.”
Ndou said there was nothing wrong with what the DA is doing: “It’s about persuading each other and finding how the other parties think and so on. These parties might agree or disagree to work together. Let’s not conclude [that just] because they are going to this convention, there is an agreement.”
He said there were two things to consider: the convention might be a success if parties agreed on the basics and “[i]t might also not be successful because when leaders go to that convention, the possibility is that they might not have got a mandate from their members and supporters. So, if leaders have not consulted thoroughly, there’s a possibility some might not be happy with their party joining hands with another party” and this could lead to voter apathy.
“The question we need to ask [is], are other party political leaders prepared to be swallowed by the DA? If they are prepared ... some parties might cease to exist,” Ndou said.
The ANC has taken a hard line against the pact, saying the proposed arrangement is fundamentally opposed to transformation.
Addressing the government’s two-day national dialogue on coalitions in Cape Town two weeks ago, deputy president Paul Mashatile proposed that to rectify the instability, the party that has won the most votes should be allowed to lead the coalition, and executive positions should be allocated proportionally to the votes obtained by coalition partners.
“A coalition government should be bound together by a commitment to good governance, with no tolerance for corruption,” Mashatile said at the meeting, which was aimed at developing a national framework for the formation and governance of coalition governments.
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