DAVID LEWIS: Gauteng ANC focuses on coalitions rather than winning over electorate

I understand why all SA political parties, from the largest to the smallest, are thinking about coalition arrangements post the 2024 elections. Opinion polls indicate that the ANC will fail to secure a majority of the votes cast in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, so it will need to be part of a coalition to achieve a majority and participate in government.

Of the remaining seven provinces the ANC seems likely to secure a majority in six on its own, while the DA will continue to dominate in the Western Cape. It’s important to emphasise that in all provinces, with the exception of the Western Cape, the ANC is still likely to be the biggest party in terms of votes cast, though in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal the smart money says this will not amount to a 50%-plus majority.   

The national election is expected to be vigorously contested, with the distinct possibility that the ANC will also secure the highest number of votes at national level but fall short of securing an absolute majority of votes cast. I’m not entirely convinced about this. I would not be surprised if, come the 2024 elections, the ANC’s electoral base returns home. 

The ANC in government, if not the country, has always been blessed by an opposition so tone deaf that it is difficult to imagine any of the ANC’s larger opponents governing the country. Look no further than their respective performance at the state of the nation address in February this year.

The EFF behaved like the storm troopers they have always been, kept alive by the cunning and charisma of their leader (not to mention funds pilfered from VBS Mutual Bank bank).

As for the DA, its leader resembled nothing so much as a character out of a Monty Python movie, pompously insisting, while Rome burned around him, that the Speaker had erred in allowing the police to enter parliament a minute before the podium was stormed, rather than a permissible minute after. 

But with the possibility, supported by the polls, that election outcomes will see the ANC lose its majority in both the national poll and those of the two most populous provinces of the country, it would be prudent for the governing party, and therefore all other parties, to consider possible coalition partners. After all, the one near certainty is that, the Western Cape excepted, while the ANC may receive less than 50% of the vote in some important elections it will still emerge as the largest party in every other provincial election, and in the national poll. 

But thinking about coalitions in the higher councils of the ANC and the larger parties is one thing. Campaigning on the basis of a coalition to be formed after the election is another matter altogether. This is what the Gauteng ANC is doing. Though it will go into the 2024 elections as the sole governing party in Gauteng, its provincial leadership appears preoccupied with cementing a post-election coalition, rather than persuading the electorate to give it a majority again. This is an admission, if ever there was one, that it has accepted that it will not retain its majority. 

The Gauteng ANC appears to favour the EFF as its post-election coalition partner, in which case its effective admission that it is likely to lose its majority will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I can’t think of too many rational arguments in favour of supporting the return to power of a party that has so ill-served the residents of the province or its metros, but one reason might be that by giving the ANC an absolute majority the EFF will not be able to participate in the government of the province. I’m confident that many voters would not vote for the ANC if it means they would in effect be endorsing a pre-election commitment to forming a coalition with the EFF.

It is possible to construct a simple game that could result in a net positive outcome from this electoral dog’s breakfast. The ANC may contemplate its fate in the three provinces where it does not achieve a majority and decide to demonstrate that it can actually govern effectively in the other six, as a means to hold on to power. Pigs, I am sure to be told, may also learn to fly.

However, it just may be that it is finally hitting home in the leadership of the ANC that if it doesn’t do something to improve its disastrous record of governance its demise is likely to long predate Jesus’s second coming. Of course, fear of imminently losing access to public resources may instead accelerate the looting. 

On the other hand, a coalition might inspire the smaller parties to demonstrate their ability to govern in the executive functions under their party’s control, the better to ensure an improved electoral outcome in the next round of elections. I can’t see this positive outcome where the EFF is concerned. Bluster aside, the party’s limited experience in government suggests its leadership understands that the party has reached a ceiling in its electoral support, and that it will rely on achieving a king-making role to extract governmental positions that will ensure access to resources. 

Low trust

Certainly, the early experience of ANC-EFF arrangements in co-governing the Gauteng metros suggests such a low level of trust between the two parties that they cannot even agree on the leadership of the councils involved. They have opted for the cynical ploy in which a tiny minority party is given the mayoral chain, which will later be redeployed by the patrons as a garotte with which to rid themselves of a dispensable mayor or two. Right now I’d vouch that many Gauteng voters would be hard pressed to buy a used car from either the EFF or the Gauteng ANC. 

ANC-DA coalitions may produce better outcomes. The DA could teach the ANC a thing or two about how to govern large, complex public budgets and bureaucracies. And perhaps daily exposure to coalition government might persuade the DA that it’s time to rid itself of the dead hand of the Zille-Steenhuisen leadership cadre, a combination of unyielding aggression and empty-suited pomposity, apparently arch proponents of the vacuous “anybody but the ANC” party line. The alternative for the DA is that it too may find it has reached the ceiling of its electoral support. 

Of course, there is the possibility that one or other of the proliferation of smaller parties will come to the fore as likely coalition partners. Those that attract most attention are Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA and Gayton McKenzie’s Patriotic Alliance. In which case, God help SA, and especially those who choose to immigrate here. 

A far more palatable option is the recently formed Rise Mzansi. Its leadership is impressive, but it would have to establish that it can gain traction among middle-class voters and the large swathe of hitherto unregistered, mostly youthful, potential voters.

SA politics is nothing if not interesting, and a year is a long time in politics. 

• Lewis, a former trade unionist, academic, policymaker, regulator and company board member, was a co-founder and director of Corruption Watch.