One year on and scepticism over coalitions is deep

Hope and trust in coalition governments have waned over the past year. Can you blame voters for becoming sceptical? Since 2021 municipalities across Gauteng and the rest of SA have been the battleground of warring coalitions.

Johannesburg’s DA-led coalition was sabotaged from within and without. It was unable to elect a city manager, was barraged by motions of no confidence, and was finally betrayed by a crucial kingmaking coalition partner in the form of the Patriotic Alliance.

This resulted in the ANC and EFF seizing power and appointing a mayor from a minnow party (Al Jama-ah). Clearly incompetent, the mayor has since been forced to resign and the new Al Jama-ah mayor is already facing accusations of being involved in fraud.

Tshwane’s coalition entered a tumultuous saga when its DA mayor was replaced by COPE’s Murunwa Makwarela, against the wishes of the rest of the coalition. It was soon discovered that Makwarela was an unrehabilitated insolvent, and thus prohibited from taking public office.

He responded with a fraudulent court rehabilitation order before also being forced to resign. Cilliers Brink of the DA is now Tshwane mayor, as originally planned by the coalition. But this has been at the cost of faith in it as a whole.

CHAOS

Coalitions in SA have become synonymous with instability and chaos. For many voters and the media they are an arena for opportunists and minority parties to throw their disproportionate weight around to seize more power than they deserve.

In response to the instability of coalitions and the ANC’s bad experiences with wilful coalition partners (read: the EFF), deputy president Paul Mashatile announced the government’s desire to strengthen the regulations governing coalitions. These aim to boost compliance with the framework set up by the SA Local Government Association (Salga).

On top of this, the ANC wishes to amend legislation to make the party with the most seats in the council responsible for setting up the governing coalition, a controversial policy that would put immense power in the hands of the majority party — even if minority parties together outnumber it.

The ANC also wants to move the onus from executive rule by mayors to governance by committee, something I cannot see solving the bickering already prevalent in the coalition committees. And there have been proposals for the vote threshold for political parties to obtain seats on the council to be increased to minimise the representation of smaller parties in coalitions. Finally, the ANC wishes for coalition agreements to be legally binding. This is something the DA, for instance, agrees with.

But can SA truly legislate compliance among political parties when the nature of coalitions requires sincere co-operation? Politicians in this country seldom follow their own rules. How will this be any different? Salga’s Lance Joel argues that coalition partners have already been violating the law with their behaviour in their coalitions. How will rule changes help when they are not following the rules?

Salga has a lot of good rules, frameworks and advice for coalitions, but they mean nothing if a coalition contains bad actors who refuse to co-operate. You cannot legislate co-operation or compliance, especially when there is no real way to ensure accountability besides the already existing mechanisms.

BACK-STABBING

For coalitions to be stable and effective, they need to manage themselves. Partners must be chosen according to strict principles to ally with sincere, professional parties that share basic principles and ideologies. There must be a commonality that goes past mere political opportunism or a desire for power.

No coalition, even with legislative safeguards and regulations, will survive the Patriotic Alliance’s back-stabbing, the EFF’s flip-flopping or ActionSA’s vendettas. If a coalition is to survive it must not contain these opportunistic kingmaker parties or troublemakers. Better not to take power at all than to have a partner with a track record of causing failure in your coalition.

It is best to let one’s opponent win than enter into a doomed coalition failure is inevitable anyway. All decent, honest parties do when they try to work with these troublemakers is muddy their own reputations and that of the coalition project.

Legislation and regulations are no substitute for common sense, co-operation and good decision-making. It is tempting to believe that laws can ensure compliance with coalition agreements, but in a country on the verge of lawlessness the law means little. Pick your friends carefully, and don’t be tempted to make a deal with the devil for the sake of a brief, hollow victory.