With the dust starting to settle on the 2024 elections, the ANC plummeting to a historic low of 40% and the DA recovering from 2019 to secure 21% of the vote, a fierce debate has gained momentum, especially in liberal circles, about what the DA should do next.
Boiled down to essentials, the choice scope ranges from the extreme of a full ANC-DA coalition to the other extreme of a strict denial of any deal. Both these extremes pose dangerous risks to the DA – a moderate middle way is critical to avoid oblivion on the one hand and a coalition folly on the other: a negotiated confidence-and-supply arrangement.
In such an arrangement, the ANC would form an ANC-only minority government under Cyril Ramaphosa, with the DA taking control of key parliamentary positions in the form of the speakership and nine key parliamentary committee chairs. Not only does this arrangement avoid the extremes on either side of the choice spectrum, but offers the surest route to accomplishing the three core objectives needed in South African politics and government over the next five years:
- Stability and sustainability of government
- Clarity of politics
- Parliamentary and constitutional oversight
It is important to appreciate how a coalition fails on all of the above, where the moderate option of confidence and supply succeeds.
Stability and sustainability of government
With no party earning a majority mandate in Parliament, the issue of stability, especially within the context of the high-profile chaos in coalitions since 2021 in places like Johannesburg, public and market concerns have quickly turned to stability. Stability goes hand-in-hand with sustainability. Meeting this first part of the test requires the establishment of a government that not only calms current market and public jitters, but one that will not land South Africa in a repeat of the current chaos within the next two or three years.
An ANC-DA coalition promises the immediacy of stability, but falls far short in terms of taking that stability into the future.
Historically, coalition stability relies on more than just a parliamentary majority. The ANC and the DA clearing the 50%+1 threshold in Parliament seems impressive, but hides more critical stability factors that will inevitably arise within the next few years.
The 2010-2015 UK coalition government between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats surprised many commentators at the time. After all, ideologically the Liberal Democrats were perceived as being closer to the social democracy of the Labour Party than the centre-right, soft Thatcherism of the Conservative Party. However, the coalition’s stability ultimately did not hinge on philosophy or politics, but on the personal chemistry between Nick Clegg, then-leader of the Liberal Democrats, and David Cameron, then-leader of the Conservatives.
An ANC-DA coalition will similarly require intense leadership chemistry to make it work. Were Ramaphosa and Steenhuisen to establish this at the outset, the odds of this lasting for the full government term would be low, especially given Ramaphosa’s precarious position, the ANC’s 2027 elective conference, and the fact that no ANC president has ever completed a second term as South Africa’s president.
Beyond the leadership question, there will also be the critical points of the 2026 and 2029 elections.
The problems facing South Africa, especially corruption and failures of service delivery, are problems primarily entrenched by the current cadre class of civil servants at various levels of government. In Cape Town, the DA-led coalition from 2006 to 2009 faced the same problem: administrative officers were the main barrier to solving the city’s problems. At the time, the cadre class was much less entrenched in Cape Town than is likely in any new government at a national level in 2024. In Tshwane, the ANC lost governing control of the city in 2016, yet almost a decade later, the necessary de-cadreing of the city’s administration remains a Sisyphean task.
Given this obstacle to progress, and the likely opposition the ANC, or at least parts of it, would present to a cleaning out of the country’s civil service and officials class, it is difficult to see how an ANC-DA coalition could make the necessary progress in the little more than two years before the next election in 2026, and the prospect of facing the voters with an at best unimpressive or worst, stumbling, record in government. Would the two parties face the 2026 local government elections as a unified front, running on a shared record that would be an unlikely vote winner? Or would they compete fiercely, as South Africans expect them to, and place the viability and stability of the coalition at risk?
DA voters in 2026 are a particular risk for an ANC-DA coalition. These voters historically hold the DA to a high standard. If the party, therefore, enters the 2026 election campaign with dissatisfaction among its voters at a high level, a weak DA result would place the DA leadership under tremendous pressure to correct course for 2029 – going the same route as the NP three decades earlier: exit from a coalition with the ANC to electoral decimation at the ballot box.
The initial promise of stability wilts under closer scrutiny of the sustainability needed for any government formed at the start of this parliamentary term.
In contrast, the confidence-and-supply option leaves more than enough in place for stability to be legitimately and recognisably established without the many critical risks lurking in the long grass of a coalition.
A confidence-and-supply arrangement promotes governmental stability by maintaining familiar roles for both parties. The ANC continues governing, while the DA supports critical votes without merging ideologies and strategies. This stability calms markets, reassures diplomats, and steadies public confidence. Given the political realities, leaders of both parties may not remain in power throughout the parliamentary term. A coalition dependent on current leadership dynamics risks instability as leadership changes. A confidence-and-supply arrangement, however, can endure beyond individual tenures, ensuring a more sustainable governance model.
Clarity of politics
It is no easy task asking the public to accept a reality different from one they’ve been exposed to for decades. Polling by the Social Research Foundation published in 2023 amidst the political chaos in Johannesburg at the time, found that “opposition voters had little firm sense of who has been governing Johannesburg, what they have been doing in government, or how the governing arrangement worked”. For various reasons, the South African public simply do not buy into the nuances of coalition government complexities.
As such, an ANC-DA coalition is unlikely to be understood to the extent necessary for the parties to survive democratically beyond the 2024-2029 term. The argument has been put forward that the DA could earn political capital from government by carving out areas of excellence in portfolios occupied by DA members of cabinet in a coalition. But this goes against the almost Maslow-driven fact that South Africans do not have the time or the inclination to distinguish the departmental origin of either government success or failure.
An ANC-DA coalition will be portrayed by opposition parties as a singular entity of accountability – and this portrayal would be fair and believable to the public. The ANC failures of government that the DA has campaigned and mobilised against for decades will be on a par with any successes achieved by DA ministers in the coalition cabinet. It would be fantasy to believe the ANC can suddenly turn the page on incompetence. Continued ANC failures will dilute DA successes and tarnish DA ministers. All of this with no discernible advantage to the DA. It would be an ignominious dismantling of the DA’s brand built by the blood, sweat, and tears of generations of DA leaders, representatives, and activists.
The extreme option of an ANC-DA coalition can only succeed politically if the South African public are willing to fundamentally redefine how they see the politics of governance. And this, I’m afraid, is a naïve hope for the DA to cling to.
Under an ANC-DA coalition, South Africans will see a predominance of government failures continuing while the gargantuan task of rooting out the cadres, crooks, and corrupt that stimy the capable state either stalls or only inches forward. Collective cabinet responsibility will straitjacket the DA into patterns of failure, even if the odd DA minister overcomes the odds and the civil service to actually achieve something. Pockets of excellence simply won’t cut it.
South Africans understand the roles of the ANC as the governing party and the DA as the opposition. A coalition would disrupt this clarity, introducing an unfamiliar political dynamic at a time of economic and social pressure. A confidence-and-supply arrangement preserves this predictability, allowing both parties to operate within known frameworks.
In terms of the moderate option of confidence and supply, this risk of mush is largely avoided. The ANC would remain in government, though humbled and, at long last, subject to parliamentary oversight. The DA would remain the opposition, although revitalised and turbocharged to build on its extensive political successes achieved from across the ANC. The public would not be expected to undergo the complicated task of tracing government actions to this ANC minister or that DA minister. Instead, the public, and the markets, would see a reality now favourably adjusted to include a healthy dose of much-desired accountability.
Parliamentary and constitutional oversight
For three decades now, the DA has been leading, even according to its critics, the battle for government accountability. Even in a Parliament dominated over the last decade by shameless ANC apparatchiks in the parliamentary offices of accountability, the DA has time and again managed to counter and even tame the worst excesses of ANC misrule. Through litigation that has pushed opponents into shrill and dangerous calls for ending the ‘interference’ of the courts in government affairs, the DA has done an incredible job of calling for and, when possible, exercising accountability oversight over the government.
This, the DA’s most substantive achievement as an opposition party in Parliament, would be scrapped and dismissed by the creation of an ANC-DA coalition. Instead of the most powerful parliamentary opposition in our country’s history, the DA will waste the moment of a humbled ANC by becoming the junior partner in a doomed government – this, while ceding control of the bully pulpit they’ve spent thirty years building to the populist and destructive radicalism of the doomsday alliance of the MK and the EFF.
Some have warned that a confidence-and-supply arrangement will allow Zuma and Malema to exploit divisions between the ANC and the DA on both sides of the aisle, yet the extent to which an ANC-DA coalition will augment this risk is left unappreciated. The idea that an MK-EFF opposition would not be able to exploit wedge issues to cripple an ANC-DA coalition is dangerously naïve. BEE, preferential procurement, cadre deployment – these issues form the core of the ANC’s single remaining unifying factor: its patronage network. Zuma or a Zuma puppet as leader of the opposition in Parliament will bludgeon any ANC-DA coalition again and again, driving a wedge between the ANC and the DA on these core pillars of the ANC’s patronage network. The DA would either be forced to turn a blind eye to the extensive failures and corruption caused by the ANC’s patronage tools, or the ANC would be forced to give these up. The former would be poison to the DA and the latter would be a shot to the head of the ANC.
If you want to empower the populist extremism of the MK-EFF alliance to rip a fledgling governing partnership asunder, go for the radical option of the ANC-DA coalition. However, if you want to tame the most aggressive forces, define the scope of political debate by ensuring a humbled ANC and a muscular DA on both sides of the Speaker’s chair. Narrative is defined by the protagonist and antagonist agreeing on terms of engagement. An ANC-DA coalition would surrender the political debate in South Africa to the most vicious anti-democratic, anti-constitutional political parties ever to win seats in a post-1994 Parliament.
Beyond the surrender of the political debate, an ANC-DA coalition will be the end of parliamentary democracy and parliamentary oversight. Where the DA has used its constitutional role in Parliament to champion moderate causes and constitutional adherence, an MK-EFF opposition will not seek to use parliamentary democracy or oversight for anything resembling proper accountability in a democracy. The ANC must realise it is not only picking a partner, but also picking its opponent. An ANC-DA coalition will pit a weakened ANC and a DA with limited experience in the use of government power against a vicious, cunning, tenacious, and experienced opponent in Jacob Zuma.
Maintaining a robust opposition is crucial for accountability. A coalition would weaken parliamentary oversight by merging the two main parties, leaving radicals in the MK-EFF doomsday alliance to dominate opposition. A confidence and supply arrangement keeps the DA in opposition, ensuring effective oversight and balanced governance.
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South Africa is changing before our eyes – and for those of us in the business of following and analysing politics, it is a thrilling time. Yet, alongside the thrills of excitement, we see the more fear-based thrills. The rapid rise of MK caught most of us off guard. This has stirred something of a panic in the ANC and DA. What to do in the face of such an insurgent political force? The answer is simple: do what is rational and reasonable, and avoid the extremes of the choice spectrum.
An ANC-DA coalition might be dressed up as the pinnacle of democratic achievement, but its weaknesses are so fundamental as to risk fatal injury to the opportunity facing us and our constitutional democracy. Such a coalition shines brightly at the moment – its promise of a new dawn is enticing. However, even modest scrutiny as set out above exposes how an ANC-DA coalition cannot meet the three-part challenge of the moment: it cannot deliver on stability and sustainability; it asks simply too much of the South African public in exchange for risky political advantage down the line; and it fundamentally risks the most hard-fought success of the 2024 elections, three decades in the making: the revitalisation of the DA as the most successful opposition party in our history, and the resurrection of parliamentary accountability.
All South Africans seeking stability, constructive politics, and a democracy worth having – critical tools in a national pro-growth, pro-opportunity realignment – should reject the folly of an ANC-DA coalition. A middle way, a reasonable and responsible solution, something much better than a radical, runaway marriage is on the table.
[Image: Bonginkosi Tekane]
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