The danger of the ANC combining with the EFF in a post-election coalition is a real one, and pro-reform forces need to be prepared for this, according to IRR Project and Publications Manager Terence Corrigan in a piece published in the Daily Maverick.
Corrigan was responding to a column by analyst and former ANC MP and diplomat Melanie Verwoerd. She wrote that the DA needed to show ‘humbleness’ and enter a coalition with the ANC (as a junior partner) to ensure that the EFF was kept from office.
Noting that the consequences of an ANC-EFF coalition would be dire, Corrigan said that a subordinate role for the DA would preclude it from pushing meaningful reform, while being co-responsible for the pathologies that had become a feature of governance. ‘If confronted with circumstances that gave the ANC access to office in coalition with either the DA or the EFF, the DA would simply have no good options,’ Corrigan wrote.
The upshot could be reminiscent of the 2009 Zimbabwean Government of National Unity, which inflicted severe damage on the Movement for Democratic Change.
A better idea would be to negotiate a limited form of cooperation to sustain an ANC minority government, or what has been called a confidence-and-supply agreement.
‘The DA and its allies would agree to refrain from votes of no confidence and to support annual budgets. The ANC would pledge to not form a coalition with the EFF or MK. On legislation and pretty much everything else, things would plod along, subject to constant negotiation. Essentially this would mean freezing South Africa in its current foetid quagmire for the coming five years,’ he wrote.
Corrigan concluded that politics was changing and required a fresh approach to analysis and to solving the country’s problems.
[Image: Mike Sweeney from Pixabay]