who?
Howard Barrell
The race to govern the Western Cape is still wide open and it is not certain who will form a coalition if, as expected, no party wins an absolute majority in the provincial legislature.
While the Democratic Party, with about 12% support, appears confident the New National Party would link up with it in a hung provincial legislature, some senior NNP representatives favour going into a coalition with the African National Congress.
Two weeks ahead of the election, the NNP and ANC are tied with about 30% support each in the province. Neither party seems to have any prospect of achieving 51%.
A majority of senior NNP representatives in the Western Cape would prefer to align their party with the DP. But the party’s charismatic maverick in the province, Peter Marais, who is the Western Cape’s MEC for health, is believed to want a coalition with the ANC.
He is also believed to have the backing of the NNP’s national leader, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, on this. A number of Marais’s senior colleagues are afraid that he, Van Schalkwyk and a handful of others may try to bounce them into a coalition with the ANC.
Marais insists the NNP will win an absolute majority in the Western Cape on June 2. But, he told the Mail & Guardian this week, if it did not, he would want keep his options open.
“There is no party that is most likely or unlikely to be our partner,” he said. “Someone who doesn’t keep his options open is not a politician, he’s an idiot.”
But another senior NNP member, Western Cape MEC for finance Leon Markovitz, said: “I certainly would not make myself available to serve on a cabinet with the ANC. My view is that it is necessary to have at least one province which should be controlled by the opposition. I am sure the majority of my NNP colleagues agree with me.”
NNP provincial MEC for safety and security Mark Wiley said he was “not interested in discussions about coalitions” in the middle of an election campaign. Colleagues, however, say he is among those most strongly opposed to any coalition with the ANC.
Sources say there are suspicions within the Cape NNP that Van Schalkwyk sees his party’s salvation as lying in an alignment with the ANC and is personally desperate for a national Cabinet post. Some members fear that this may prompt their leader to try to force the Western Cape NNP into a coalition with the ANC in the province in exchange for the reward of a position for Van Schalkwyk in an Mbeki government.