Coalition politics has risen to prominence in the public imagination in recent months following divisions and breakdowns in several local government councils, including the high-profile metros of Johannesburg and Tshwane. In response to this crisis, Good Governance Africa called on President Cyril Ramaphosa and his cabinet to establish an independent panel.
This panel should assess the limits of the coalition in South Africa to strengthen its effectiveness. By recommending an appropriate combination of remedies implemented by governments, political parties and civil society, the panel can help pave the way to a more stable system that works for citizens.
Coalition in South Africa
A coalition is formed when no political party obtains a majority of seats in the elected council. This created a “hung council”, meaning that the parties had to govern together.
Multiparty politics is inevitable at national, provincial and local levels in South Africa. In 2016, 27 local councils were suspended. Currently, there are more than 80. From 2024 Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal – which together comprise 45.6% of South Africa’s population – will probably have a multiparty government.
The inevitability of multiparty politics makes the situation unstable. Municipalities in several provinces including Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape are affected. Johannesburg has only gone through six terms of municipal administration since November 2019.
Governance is negatively affected by this: political instability increases, decision-making slows down, uncertainty among municipal officials increases, accountability is blurred and basic service delivery suffers.
As a result, public trust in multiparty politics is lost. Intervention is needed, but it is difficult to manage political processes such as coalition formation.
Two components that enhance coalition effectiveness are a conducive political culture that emphasizes inter-party cooperation, and an institutional framework that enhances stability and transparency. Absence at the local level has left coalition politics for the short-term interests of the party.
Ahead of the 2021 local government elections, organizations including the South African Local Government Association (working with the Dullah Omar Institute), as well as the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection are producing work on how South Africa can address this issue.
The main recommendations given include increasing the time for the formation of the leadership council, issuing coalition agreements, setting up dispute resolution mechanisms and protecting the basic administration from political barter.
In the 15 months since the election, the political parties have no desire to establish these norms of their own accord, with a corrosive effect. This makes us believe that an external request in the form of an independent panel commissioned by the president on the coalition can facilitate the process.
The case for an independent panel of experts
The President is constitutionally empowered in section 84(2)(f) to appoint a commission of inquiry. This includes the power to create committees or expert advisory panels to investigate specific policy matters. The decision to establish a panel, as well as the mandate and composition of the panel, must be rational.
The possibility of coalitions at all levels of government is a complex and controversial issue. This requires an analysis of the regulatory framework applicable to coalition oversight and accountability mechanisms.
Next year will be the first time our democracy faces the realistic prospect of a national coalition government since the Government of National Unity (GNU) from 1994 to 1999. The GNU was plagued by political conflict. After being formed, The New York Times described the cabinet as “an eclectic, even explosive mix of personalities, backgrounds and styles that will challenge Mr Mandela’s promise to rule by consensus”.
Party dissonance in our current political climate is nothing short of inflammatory. Post-2024 national and provincial coalitions will also be ideologically conflicting alliances formed out of necessity, rather than a genuine desire to work together.
Thus, the expert panel can help ensure that the national coalition government will be more effective than before, and in that way can promote our constitutional values of accountability, responsiveness and openness.
Proportional electoral systems such as South Africa’s tend to produce more coalition governments than majoritarian systems. Neither our constitution nor any legislation contains specific provisions governing the formation of coalition governments at local, provincial or national levels, but this is not unique.
For example, coalition governments are also a common feature in Germany, but there is no specific law in the German Constitution or legislation that provides a specific regulatory framework for coalition agreements or governments. The framework is usually decided by negotiation between the political parties involved.
But German political culture is underlined by a greater willingness on the part of the parties to act in a cooperative manner. The wealth of research produced here and abroad on this topic has yet to gain sufficient traction across parties even as South Africa enters an era defined by coalition politics.
This requires the meeting of an independent panel that has the authority to examine the issue and make recommendations. The appointment of the panel will lend legitimacy to South Africa’s changing political landscape and help identify how existing democratic institutions can adapt.
There is precedent in South Africa for independent panels to consider matters relevant to political issues, particularly electoral reform. The most famous is the Van Zyl Slabbert Commission on Electoral Reform, an advisory electoral task force established by the cabinet in 2002. The Parliamentary Independent Panel Assessment published in 2006 and 2017 also considered the issue of electoral reform – but its recommendations were never implemented.
This is not to say that independent panels in coalitions are useless. The Van Zyl Slabbert report generated an important discussion on the issue of electoral reform, particularly on the new electoral amendment bill. In addition, it and subsequent reports, do not directly consider the situation where coalitions are common at all levels of government.
At that time, the political context did not force a change in the electoral system. Now, the possibility of a national coalition government could lead to more serious consideration of the expert panel’s recommendations, by parliament and party leaders.
This is needed in a democracy that suffers from political dissonance and accountability issues. There has been extensive research, based on data from other jurisdictions, analyzing the effectiveness of parliamentary oversight bodies and judicial dispute settlement mechanisms in coalition-led countries.
We already have many of these democratic accountability mechanisms, so it is a question of using them more effectively in a coalition scenario.
Uniquely, the panel can publish its findings in an accessible way and can inform the public about how and why they can hold the coalition government accountable, giving other sectors of society a voice on this important issue.
The recommendations of this panel should serve as guidelines or informs the creation of a high-level regulatory framework for the political parties that form the coalition government. Proposing a new law to regulate coalition agreements extensively and their functions would be a distraction from the legislative branch to the executive branch of government, contrary to the principle of separation of powers.
The formation and governance of coalitions is a multifaceted political issue that must be flexible and adaptable to the context – a domain in which executives are most experienced.
In this new era of coalition politics, there must be a healthy balance between legal and institutional frameworks that support stable, accountable and transparent leadership, and the freedom for parties to take control of areas that are largely political.
Democracy depends on institutions and the trust citizens have in those institutions. Currently, trust in the coalition is low due to instability at the local level.
Fed-up citizens may think that electing an independent panel will stop them. The alternative is to leave the solution to the political parties themselves, with no meaningful external input and no time for change.
Helen Acton is a legal analyst and Pranish Desai is a senior data analyst in the Governance Insights and Analytics program at Good Governance Africa.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect official policy or position Mail & Guardians.