LETTER: How likely is an ANC-EFF doomsday coalition?

No polls currently have the ANC winning an outright majority in the national election or in all the provinces on May 29. The DA has won a majority in the Western Cape in recent elections, and while some have suggested it may need to form an alliance with one of the smaller parties to retain power in the province, that will not be the ANC.

The polls do indicate that the ANC will need an alliance partner in Gauteng, and reports are that ANC premier Panyaza Lesufi is courting the EFF. If the ANC also falls short in the Free State or Northern Cape, the EFF should have sufficient votes to help it form a coalition to govern there as well.

The picture in KwaZulu-Natal is less clear. While some have speculated that the ANC and IFP may be able to get to 50% together, others point to a coalition between the more ideologically aligned parties, ANC-EFF-MK, being the most likely outcome.

The ANC, with support from parties to its left where needed, could therefore be in a position to retain power in eight of the nine provinces, and the EFF may have some prized bargaining chips that the “moonshot pact” grouping will not realistically be able to counter when the national coalition government is negotiated.

Scenarios where the ANC-EFF doomsday coalition is averted nationally require convoluted thinking and situations as unlikely as the ANC partnering with parties to its left at provincial level and with parties in the moonshot pact to its right at the national level.

Greg Becker
Cape Town

JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.​