President Cyril Ramaphosa gave a speech at the ceremony held to announce the results of the 2024 national and provincial election on Sunday. Picture: sanews.gov.za
Battered and bruised by voters at the polls, the ANC have had to accept they need coalition partners to run the country as the political landscape shifts dramatically.
What deals President Cyril Ramaphosa, under pressure himself to stay in the hot seat, and his “powerless” ANC will be able to pull off remains to be seen as the ruling party dipped below the majority for the first time since the start of democracy in 1994. This renders it unable to run the country alone.
The ruling party received a mere 40.19% – dropping from 57.5% in 2019.
On the one hand, if it partners with the Democratic Alliance (DA) it will be condemned within for adopting a “neoliberal approach and sleeping with the capitalist devil”.
But should it choose the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) or Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party, the ANC will spark angry reactions from the markets for opting for the socialist route that they so dread.
The biggest party the ANC could engage without needing to involve other parties is the DA.
A partnership with the EFF would fall short of the 50% plus one threshold required to form a government. Only adding MK as another partner could take the three into a two-thirds majority.
Political analyst Prof Lesiba Teffo said an ANC-DA coalition would be the best for the country.
“A man whom I respect, Dr Snuki Zikalala, once mentioned the ANC-DA coalition as a necessity, rather than one with EFF. Perhaps the ANC was testing the waters through him. He couldn’t have said it without consultation,” he said.
Teffo was referring to a call by Zikalala, president of the ANC Veteran’s League, that the DA should be chosen as a future coalition partner. But he was criticised by some in the ANC.
However, the notion has again come to the fore with the current coalition talks.
“An ANC-DA coalition is the right thing for the country. A coalition with MK is a non-starter because their first condition would be that Ramaphosa goes and I don’t think the ANC will compromise on that and MK will not compromise either,” Teffo said.
He added that a DA-ANC partnership would work because corruption and cadre deployment would be stopped and appointments would be on merit.
“This would also help the ANC renew itself because the careerists, opportunists and tender-preneurs will walk away as there will be no room to manipulate processes.
In such a coalition, meritocracy rather than kleptocracy would be at the centre of governance.
“All that is needed is men and women who can work together for the good of the people without socialist slogans, without ideologies and putting the interests of the people first,” Teffo said.
There was a problem with the EFF because the ANC elders saw leader Julius Malema as disrespectful and desiring to unseat Ramaphosa and destroy the ANC.
The EFF has indicated its willingness to sign a coalition agreement with the ANC and has moderated its anti-Ramaphosa stance.
Malema said he “is not our problem” and “not our president but the president of the ANC”.
This implied it would not be a condition in negotiations.
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But Teffo said the DA was a better option than the EFF or MK because it has a track record of good governance and has intellectual capital.
“With the DA in the new coalition government foreign direct investments will flow much faster,” Teffo said.
Independent political analyst Sanusha Naidu said the best coalition would take into consideration the stability of the economy, transparency and stability of the fiscus and respect for the constitution.
“The national interest right now is a stable government that is able to satisfy domestic and international needs.”
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