“The people have spoken,” President Cyril Ramaphosa declared as he arrived at the national results operations centre of the IEC last evening. “We accept and respect the will of the people, however concerning it might be”.
The African National Congress (ANC), the political party Ramaphosa has led since 2017, is battered and bruised. Overall, its share of the vote plunged from 45.59% in 2021 to 30.77% this week. It is the clearest indication yet that the party of Nelson Mandela is on its way to oblivion.
The Democratic Alliance (DA), under new management, took second with 24.64%, up from 21.62%. The uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) placed third with 9.77%, a decent performance for a party whose leader was immobilised in the weeks before its first municipal contests. A much-diminished Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) returned in fourth place with 6.22%, down from 10.32%. Finally, ActionSA (ASA) took fifth place with 5.67%, up from 2.34%. None were able to achieve outright majorities in most councils.
Coalition surge
More municipalities will be governed by coalitions than ever. In 138 out of the country’s 213 councils, no party was able to achieve the 50% required to govern alone. This means coalition negotiations will begin in earnest, if they haven’t already.
The big players are ready to talk. The ANC is weighing its options, including the possibility of occupying opposition benches. The DA, ASA, Vryheidsfront Plus (VF+) and EFF have each placed service delivery at the heart of their negotiations, while MKP is looking for ideological companions. They have exactly two weeks to find one another.
An institutional feature
Coalitions were baked into South Africa’s institutional architecture during the transition from apartheid. The Municipal Structures Act 117 of 1998 institutionalised a mixed-member proportional representation system. Half of a municipality’s councillors are elected directly in wards, where the candidate with the most votes wins the seat. The other half are allocated through proportional representation, with parties receiving seats broadly in line with their share of the overall vote. This system was designed to ensure that councils reflect the electorate’s political diversity rather than produce artificial majorities. Due to the fragmentation of the electorate, it has become difficult for any single party to win an outright majority, making coalition governments unavoidable.
This was a necessary mechanism in post-apartheid South Africa. Forty-six years of apartheid showed what happens when one racial group enjoys too much power. Proportional representation ensures that political institutions more accurately reflect South Africa’s social and political diversity and prevent any specific group from monopolising power. Coalitions are the practical expression of this reality.
This emerged more clearly as the ANC lost support.Cape Town was the first to enter the age of coalition politics, in 2006. Metros farther afield followed in 2016, when the ANC dipped below 50% in Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni and Nelson Mandela Bay. The trend reached the shores of eThekwini and Buffalo City in 2021. The latest elections have confirmed that coalition politics is here to stay.
Governing with (dis)agreement
This compels political parties to work together. Compatibility, trust and legitimacy will be at the centre of any coalition negotiations.Co-operation will not come easily, given the fact that they have just emerged from a period of intense competition for votes. But the arithmetic demands co-operation.
Regarding compatibility,political parties will assess their potential to work together. The DA-EFF marriage of convenience in 2016 quickly descended into chaos as the parties clashed on policies like insourcing. That experience should be enough to make parties wary of ignoring ideological divisions.The cost of disagreement must be lower than the benefits of co-operation if coalitions are to survive.
Secondly, parties must trust that their future partners will respect agreements, honour commitments and avoid opportunistic behaviour.Johannesburg had six mayors in the previous five-year term alone. The changes were due to fickle partners whose loyalties swayed with the wind. An unstable term indeed.
In addition to compatibility and trust, a key ingredient is legitimacy in the eyes of voters.A DA-MKP alliance, for example, is off the cards not least because it would draw the ire of either party’s supporters.Parties are after all accountable to voters (in theory, if not in practice) and so any agreement will have to be palatable to their supporters.
The DA will likely be at the centre of any coalition talks. Although it placed second nationally, it came out ahead of the rest in four out of eight metros (Ekurhuleni, Johannesburg, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay) and retained its majority in Cape Town.This does not guarantee its candidates mayoral chains, but it does place it in a strong position. It could also remain in opposition should it fail to find compatible, trustworthy and acceptable partners to get it over the line.
Next five years
The outcome of these negotiations will set the stage for the next five years.
Johannesburg is the poster child for what goes wrong when coalitions collapse. The revolving door in the mayoral office has left the city adrift, without a coherent political programme. Consequently, service delivery lapses have become more apparent as communities go for days, weeks or even months without water or electricity, or both.
Political parties have two weeks to find one another and agree to co-govern.The Municipal Structures Act requires councils to meet to elect office-bearers within 14 days of the election results being declared. Coalitions could take the shape of either a full coalition or confidence-and-supply agreement.
In the first instance, parties join hands and supposedly govern together. The government of national unity is an example of this arrangement practiced at the national level, but it has also been the default at the local level in metros and other hung councils. Such an arrangement would produce a more stable majority, smoother budgetary arrangements and better policy co-ordination. However, it requires a great deal of compromise and is difficult to exit.
The confidence-and-supply agreement is a lesser-known alternative. This was the arrangement in Johannesburg immediately after the 2021 municipal election, when ASA and the EFF helped install the DA’s Mpho Phalatse without a formal agreement. Although it provides greater flexibility and is easier to negotiate before the comparatively short window, it comes at the cost of constant re-negotiation.
No party can govern alone
The results of Wednesday’s election are clear: no party will be able to govern alone in most of South Africa’s municipalities.
As Ramaphosa stated when the results were declared: “Voters have given their representatives a responsibility to work together, even where they differ.”
After months of combative campaigning, political parties will have to huddle in the negotiating room and work out a way forward. A fortnight of discussions will settle the question of who governs next.
[Image: Maciej Cisowski on Unsplash]
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