Municipal elections: Analyst predicts ‘unholy’ coalitions will implode before June
Have South African voters suffered the worst losses at the municipal polls?
When South Africans voted in the municipal elections last year, they did so in support of the political party of their choice. They wanted the leaders of this party to represent them at local level, and they wanted their party to be the one in control of their municipality.
Although analysts predicted that the ANC would come in under 50% at the polls, there was an expectation that the DA – as the official opposition – would win control of a few municipalities, with the help of smaller parties.
WATCH: Will local coalitions meet the needs of the electorate? Journalist Izak du Plessis asks this question of political analyst Oscar van Heerden.
But the unthinkable happened. The elections delivered 66 hung councils throughout the country, leaving parties – including the governing ANC – scrambling to form coalitions.
Political analyst Dr Oscar van Heerden says many people have been left questioning whether their needs will be met by coalition councils, given that coalition politics is yet to mature in South Africa.
He predicts that ‘some of these unholy alliances and coalitions are going to implode before we see June’.
“The proof lies in what happened after the elections of 2016. It was just a disaster. It became patronage politics. They had to pay each other to vote with each other, to stay in the coalition at all costs and, unfortunately, some parties have suffered politically in the process.
“The two main opposition parties are so divergent in their policy frameworks, that they won’t be able to find common ground.”
He says Parliament needs to do what the Europeans did and craft proper legislation around coalitions to secure South Africa’s future because ‘coalition governments are here to stay’.
