‘If voters sit back and allow the ANC and EFF to take over South Africa, our country will literally be burnt to ashes,” DA leader John Steenhuisen told the media at an event on Sunday evening, just three weeks before the 2024 national elections.
Steenhuisen was also launching the leading opposition party’s latest election advert, which articulated the DA’s worst fear: that not enough people would vote on 29 May 2024, leading to “coalition of corruption” between the ANC, EFF and the Zuma faction, where “life will only get worse”.
Steenhuisen emphasised that this “doomsday coalition” between the ANC and the EFF – which he reminded his audience he first brought attention to at the DA’s Federal Congress last April – is already evident in some of the most important cities in our country, with the working relationship between the ANC and EFF only deepening in Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Nelson Mandela Bay.
“We have seen it here in Gauteng, where the ANC’s Panyaza Lesufi is clearly setting the table to go into coalition with the EFF at provincial level,” he said. “This will mean that the industrial heartland of South Africa will be under the control of radical populists who will destroy what is left of Gauteng’s economy.”
Read more in Daily Maverick: 2024 elections
Steenhuisen said that EFF leader Julius Malema had gone on record that the EFF would give its votes to the ANC on condition that property was expropriated without compensation, that mines were nationalised and that Floyd Shivambu (implicated in looting VBS bank) became finance minister of the republic.
“In every single place where the Doomsday Coalition already governs, the consequences have been catastrophic,” Steenhuisen said. “Basic service delivery has collapsed, looting runs rampant, taps run dry and life gets harder for everyone.”
"But before we air the piece, I’d like to take you back to April last year, to the DA’s Federal Congress. At this event, I became the first political leader to warn the South African public that an ANC-EFF Doomsday Coalition could arise after the 2024 election." - @jsteenhuisen… pic.twitter.com/i92qWd4Tal
— Democratic Alliance (@Our_DA) May 5, 2024
Velani Ludidi previously reported for Daily Maverick that no matter the outcome of the 2024 elections, the ANC, even if it receives below the 50+1 majority required to form a government, will likely receive the biggest chunk of the votes. If the ANC does not receive a majority, however, it will have to form a coalition with another party.
Steenhuisen explained that the reason the DA committed to the Multi-Party Charter (MPC), which had brought together 11 opposition parties for the first time in 30 years, was to defeat a doomsday coalition.
“So right from the start, we’ve been honest enough to take the risk of the doomsday so seriously, that we went on to take the historic decision to reach across the aisle and work with like-minded opposition parties to prevent the doomsday,” Steenhuisen said.
Daily Maverick has also reported that polls and political commentators believe that the MPC will get well below 50% of the votes.
Read more in Daily Maverick: DA’s Steenhuisen eases back on contentious comments about working with ANC
A section of the MPC commits signatories to not engage in any working arrangements or co-governing agreements with the ANC, EFF or any rival formations.
Political analyst and former ANC MP Melanie Verwoerd, however, wrote in an opinion piece for Daily Maverick that if the DA chose not to enter into a coalition with the ANC, it could push the ANC into the EFF’s arms – resulting in the “Doomsday Coalition” that Steenhuisen speaks of – and the DA would have to take responsibility.
“In just 24 days, our country goes to the polling booths to vote in the most important election since 1994,” Steenhuisen said.
“We face a clear binary choice in this election that will determine whether we resuscitate our South African dream – or whether our dreams are literally burnt to ashes.”
The future governance of SA, according to the DA, will either be the “Doomsday Coalition” between the ANC, the EFF, possibly the MK party, as well as smaller parties, or a new multi-party government, with the DA as the strong anchor party. DM