Opposition parties need to reinvent themselves

The world of sport is constantly evolving in order to remain relevant. The fraternity is always taking further steps to gain new fans.

Think back to what the International Cricket Council did in the early 2000s, when Test cricket fan numbers were dwindling. They introduced the much shorter and dynamic T20 format of the game. All of a sudden young people were interested in what was considered an archaic game.

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Loosely explained, padel is a crazy mash-up of tennis and squash and it continues to be the world’s fastest-growing sport. In some circles, tennis and squash are sometimes perceived as having reached their expiry dates, so padel is injecting some much-needed oomph.

Methinks that local politics is at that pivotal point when the number of unregistered young South Africans – about 14 million – keeps increasing, opposition parties need to reinvent themselves.

The concept of political parties banding together is not a new one, as the tripartite alliance between the ANC, SACP and Cosatu has been around for a while. Add to that the endless coalitions that are governing parts of South Africa and you get the picture.

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Now, the Multi-Party Charter (MPC), or the moonshot pact, is a reimagining of a coalition, as the seven parties involved are hoping to do politics in a new way, where egos are out of the way and taking South Africa forward will be business as usual.

As with the introduction of a new sport or variant, there are many questions voters have for the MPC.

Who will lead the party, should they win an election? How equal will each party be? To make South Africans’ lives more tricky is that, after the idea of the MPC seems to be getting more popular by the day, more coalitions are brewing.

The Pan-Africanist Congress is reaching out to other pan-Africanist parties such as the Azanian’s People Organisation to unseat the ANC, as well as to challenge the MPC.

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At first, seeing an oversized tennis racquet and a cricket match that lasted just 40 overs was just downright weird, but we got used to it and enjoyed it.

Of course it is weird to see oversized parties work together, but we will get used to it and, who knows, we might even enjoy voting for them.