Coalitions complex & complicated — let the thousand permutations bloom

10 Jun 2024

With less than a week before the National Assembly and the nine provincial legislatures have their first sittings after the elections, it is still unclear what will happen and whether political parties can work together. Despite that, some things are known and some assumptions can be made.

There is little that is certain about our politics in normal times, never mind times as complex as these where such a tight deadline is imposed upon decision-makers. That said, some things can be safely assumed to be true.

The first is that there will not be a rerun of the 2024 election.

The Constitution appears to limit the option of another election in these circumstances to situations where “the result of an election of the National Assembly is not declared within the period established in terms of section 190, or if an election is set aside by a court…”

The election has already been declared by the Electoral Commission, meaning the only other option is if a court sets it aside.

uMkhonto Wesizwe (MK) has repeatedly said it will contest the validity of the election in court, but as yet has presented no evidence of wrongdoing.

Second, it is safe to assume that any government must include the ANC and that it will be the main, dominant partner.

This is not just because it won more than 40% of the vote, which is much more than anyone else. It is also because the parties that came second, third and fourth — the DA, MK and the EFF — cannot and will not work together.

If it is true that the country cannot be governed without the ANC, it may also be true that KwaZulu-Natal cannot be governed without MK.

This brings us to our third near-certainty: governance in KZN will be a mess.

This is because MK won 45% of the vote in that province, which translates to 37 of the 80 seats in the KZN legislature. The IFP, ANC and DA together hold 40 seats, while the EFF has two.

EFF deputy leader Floyd Shivambu has already said they would support MK in KZN, meaning the single seat which could decide the balance is held by the National Freedom Party (NFP).

But even the EFF’s support seems fragile, because EFF leader Julius Malema may well be frustrated that Zuma formed MK in the first place, something which cost the EFF votes. Were it not for MK, Malema would in all likelihood be in a much stronger position than he is now.

Even if their relationship works, none of the representatives from these two parties in the KZN legislature appears to have any governance experience.

To make matters more complicated, MK has said it will not attend Friday’s National Assembly sitting. This may well mean it won’t attend the KZN legislature sitting either.

That would open the door to an ANC/IFP/DA coalition, particularly if the NFP joins them.

It is worth considering the wisdom of trying to govern KZN without MK.

The fact that the national police commissioner has sent so many police officers to the province and is keeping them there indicates his concern about what could be a combustible situation.

And it is not certain that an ANC/IFP/DA coalition would be sustainable either. A sitting of the provincial legislature which one member does not attend could see power changing hands.

Thus, it can be safely assumed that the provincial government in KZN will not be sustainable.

The third safe assumption is that there cannot be a government of national unity (GNU) that includes both the EFF and the DA.

Both parties have made it clear that they will not work with each other. The DA will also not work with MK.

This means there can be no GNU, at least in the way it was originally proposed.

That is the end of the list of what we can consider to be almost certain.

Unlikely combinations

Then there are combinations which are very unlikely to happen and which can probably be ruled out, at least for the moment.

The first is the ANC working in government with MK, which is extremely unlikely to occur, despite the meetings which took place over the weekend.

Zuma has betrayed the ANC too often. He and other officials have said they were working on forming MK more than four years ago. During this time, Zuma was sitting in National Executive Committee meetings of the ANC as an observer.

Surely no relationship can survive such a breach of trust. Even if the ANC and MK were to try to work together, it simply would not last.

The relationship between the ANC and the EFF may also fall into this category.

Just over a year ago, in March 2022, Malema was so confident that he could tell Parliament, “I’m in charge… I’ve got you by the scrotum”.

Much has changed since then. While his party lost only a small amount of support, that difference is enough to stop the ANC and the EFF from forming a government in the national government or Gauteng without the help of other parties.

What a difference those two percentage points have made.

While there has been a long and difficult history between the parties and particularly their leaders, perhaps the most important recent comment on this came from the ANC chair, Gwede Mantashe, in the weeks before the election.

Speaking to BusinessLIVE he responded to Julius Malema’s suggestion that Floyd Shivambu should be finance minister by saying, “Where I have influence I will never accept Floyd as a minister of finance because that is an outright formula for looting.”

This surely shows that any agreement in which the EFF is given significant power in government is simply not possible.

Possible but difficult

This takes us into the realm of the “merely unlikely”: combinations which are possible, but still difficult.

Here, the most important relationship is between the ANC and the DA.

As previously stated, it is very difficult for the ANC to work with the DA in government.

Both the ANC and the DA will lose votes in the process. Some ANC voters will believe a line has been crossed by working with the DA, while some DA voters will believe the party is keeping the ANC in power despite all the corruption associated with it.

This makes a formal coalition, in which the two parties share power, unlikely.

This may well be what underpinned the DA’s apparent offer of a “confidence and supply” model: the belief that the ANC has very few options.

Obviously, the matter is nowhere near an end. There are many known-unknowns (where we know we don’t know), and unknown-unknowns (where we don’t even know we don’t know).

Perhaps the most important known-unknown is that we do not know whether MK will make good on its threat to boycott the first sitting of the National Assembly on Friday.

If MK’s 58 MPs do not attend, then the number of votes the ANC needs to elect a President will fall from 201 to 172. (Under Parliament’s rules, a President needs to win a majority of votes of the MPs who are present. If all 400 are present that number is 201, but if only 342 MPs are present that number falls to 172.)

The ANC has 159 seats, making it just 13 short.

The IFP has 17 seats, which would get the ANC comfortably over what it needs.

This may be the least difficult option for the ANC. Reaching an agreement with the IFP in the short term to elect a President may well be the best option for the moment.

This would also remove the tension of the 14-day deadline and allow everyone to breathe.

But only until MK takes up its seats in Parliament.

Which means Cyril Ramaphosa could remain President only until Zuma tells his MPs to go to Parliament — because there can be no doubt of one of the biggest certainties in our politics: Zuma hates Ramaphosa and wants him out of power. DM

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Unlikely combinations

Possible but difficult