Joburg government is constantly changing but progress is stagnant

When Al Jama-ah’s Thapelo Amad was elected Joburg mayor last Friday, there was an uproar about his experience in running a municipality as massive as Joburg and his party’s lack of constituency.

The feeling was that if a coalition government was at national level, it would be a disaster, as the country would be plunged into chaos. Gauteng municipalities are showing us a preview of what might be the politics of South Africa if the 2024 elections produced a national coalition government.

There is no doubt that the coalitions in our metros have truly disappointed and yielded the opposite of what was hoped. Everyone can agree that coalitions in South Africa have led to instability in administrations.

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For instance, if we can take a close look at the City of Joburg, a continuous change of government has been the order of the day, but the progress of the city has been stagnant.

Instead of these political parties which have formed a coalition government working together and keeping each other in check, all they do is challenge each other within the corridors of power and sabotage one another in the hope of gaining more political power at the expense of the people.

As we waited for the promised change, all we had was a domination of squabbles by politicians scrambling for political power, while the basic needs of the people and issues of service delivery were left neglected – in the long run leaving residents more frustrated and with a total loss of hope in politics.

Now, if we imagined a national coalition government, we would find ourselves in a situation in which every political party in the coalition was pulling in different directions. We would be left with political parties failing to take responsibility because of the blame game.

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At this moment if there are problems, we know we are going to blame the ANC. But in a coalition, a direct party to take the fall would not emerge due to fingers pointing everywhere.

In a coalition government we would end up with an administration that does not have a clear economic policy, which, in turn, would push investors away because of too many contradictions.

We might find ourselves with a new government almost every three months, and that would lead to political instability, which would diminish our standing in Africa and global politics. It would further lead to a confused civil service that failed to implement government policy because of the differences within the political heads, especially when it came to land and strategic sectors of the economy.

In a country like ours, a coalition government would make decision-making a very tedious process due to the political parties not singing from the same hymn book and each party trying to make sure it set the tone over the other.

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But we should bear in mind that these scenarios would only happen if the Democratic Alliance partnered with the ANC or any other political party, due to a wide range of policy differences.

Therefore, the only coalition that might have a sense of stability would be that of the ANC and the Economic Freedom Fighters because the differences between the two is not too wide. The fight between the two would be of personalities, instead of the ideology which determined the country’s direction.

As much as a coalition government might provide a sense of accountability from politicians in a general sense, South Africa is not yet at that level because of the immaturity found within political parties that fail to put their differences aside in favour of the citizens.

Maybe a direct vote for each public representative would be more effective than a coalition.

-Mthembu is News24’s Young Mandela 2022 winner in the leadership category.

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