Agriculture Ministure John Steenhuisen. Photo: Dwayne Senior/Getty Images
Democratic Alliance (DA) leader John Steenhuisen has delivered a major win for the party in negotiations for a multi-party coalition of opposition parties to unseat the ANC in next year’s elections.
Seven opposition parties have come out of their pre-election coalition talks with a concrete agreement on how they will share power if they manage to oust the ANC in the 2024 national and provincial elections.
The parties have committed to the Multi-party Charter for South Africa and a declaration locking them into the agreement and allaying concerns that the DA might go the route of a grand coalition with the ANC after the May elections.
In terms of the agreement, the details of which were outlined on Thursday afternoon, the leader of the coalition partner that secures the largest number of votes will automatically become the leader of government business in a coalition cabinet.
As things stand, this would guarantee Steenhuisen the post of deputy president of the country as the leader of the largest opposition party, should they make it over the line in the next elections.
The issue of who becomes president would have to be resolved through a vote in parliament because it is MPs, and not voters, who elect South Africa’s head of state.
The DA entered the negotiations on the back foot; its coalition partners were baying for blood, with the official opposition perceived to be in talks with the ANC for a grand coalition.
The political parties in the coalition fought and won against the DA on the first day of negotiations, with Steenhuisen having to concede to an agreement to expand the coalition “objectively”.
This was a win for ActionSA, which has been at loggerheads with the DA over its unwillingness to allow the Patriotic Alliance (PA) to be included in the coalition.
The new agreement is likely to extend to the metros. ActionSA has been petitioning its coalition partners for a chance to run Johannesburg, with the DA as its stumbling block.
An ActionSA-led coalition government in Johannesburg would not be possible without the buy-in of the Patriotic Alliance.
Insiders privy to the talks on Wednesday said the concession by the DA on expanding the coalition was heavily opposed by Steenhuisen.
“All the other parties wanted the extension but one. The DA has always said they are in favour of certain parties coming on board but, to be honest with you, they did give reasons but it was irrational,” one said.
The insider said one of the reasons forwarded by the DA against the expansion was that parties such as the Patriotic Alliance did not share the same values.
“What we all pushed on was that we looked at the electoral map. We looked at pathways to a majority where we analysed what parties can bring to the table in terms of the nine provinces and national,” they said.
“It looks like we will probably be in the low 40s nationally and … if you are in the low 40s, you can account for some additional numbers by way of registering voters but in real terms you have to bring more parties. That was the thing that mounted a lot of pressure initially.”
Steenhuisen bounced back on the second day of negotiations, with the coalition partners agreeing to terms that would guarantee that the DA lands at the Union Buildings, should the coalition win next year’s elections.
The parties will share cabinet posts on a proportional system based on the number of votes they secure, but have also agreed in principle to review the size of South Africa’s bloated cabinet should they come to power.
They have also agreed to carry out lifestyle audits on all members of the executive, and that the party which is dominant in cabinet will not enjoy the same dominance in parliament.
This will give key posts such as committee chairs, the speaker and the whips positions in the National Assembly and the National Council of the Provinces — as well as the provincial legislatures — to the other parties in the coalition.
The parties also agreed that they would allocate cabinet posts based on merit and not patronage or party membership and to make cabinet appointments from across South Africa’s population groups, so that the cabinet reflects the diversity of the country’s people.
Leaders of the DA, the Inkatha Freedom Party, Freedom Front Plus, ActionSA, the United Independent Movement, the Spectrum National Party and the Independent South African National Civic Organisation signed off on the agreement on Thursday afternoon.
This was after two days of intense negotiations, which followed three months of discussion among the parties on the moonshot pre-election agreement first mooted by Steenhuisen when he was elected for a second term in April.
The agreement identifies a joint vision, priorities and areas of common policy among the seven core parties, along with the principles for power sharing, which the parties and the facilitators have identified as a major breakthrough.
While the parties will contest the elections with their own manifestos and with their own identities, they now have a guideline on how to constitute a government after the election, along with eight broad policy areas and priorities for governance.
They have already developed a common social media identity for the elections, which all parties will use while conducting their own campaigns in a bid to imbed the idea of the coalition with South African voters.
William Gumede, the independent chairperson of the convention, said on Thursday that the declaration had been agreed upon and would be signed off on by the leaders by the end of the day.
Gumede said the power-sharing agreement was particularly significant because it would prevent the inter-party battles over how posts were allocated, which have undermined the stability of coalitions governments at municipal level since 2016.
He said the parties had behaved “maturely” in being able to reach agreements with each other despite having fought each other and campaigned against each other in an often “toxic” fashion over the years.
The agreement was “the very first pre-election agreement in South Africa’s modern history” and, as such, was “unprecedented” in providing a coalition programme, Gumede said.
They had secured agreement on about 20 areas, and had gone a long way in building trust among parties that “had campaigned against each other very vigorously in the past and which had competed against each other in a sometimes toxic way”.
“It is not easy to do that,” Gumede said.
The parties had not secured agreement on issues including funding, and the bills tabled before parliament by the DA to limit the size of coalitions and prevent the participation of parties with less than 1% of the vote.
There would be further discussions to flesh out the eight areas of policy into a series of policies that would be applied by a coalition government, along with more discussions on which parties could join to get the grouping to the 50% plus one of votes it needs to govern in 2024.
“They commit to work on a fully fledged policy platform in the months to come based on the pillars that have been agreed upon,” Gumede said. “It can’t be too closed yet because there are still ongoing processes to bring more parties into the coalition, but the core principles are there.
“It is a really significant moment for a group of parties that have fought each other in the past.”
Gumede and party leaders described the discussions as “robust” and “frank” with the issue of which parties could be invited to broaden the coalition — in particular the Patriotic Alliance — becoming a sticking point among parties.
While the DA had been in favour of excluding the PA because of its governance agreements with the ANC and the Economic Freedom Fighters at local government level, other
parties pointed to the need to bring on board as many voters as possible if the group is to constitute a majority.
As a compromise, the parties agreed on a set of criteria by which parties that wanted to join would have to abide, and that each application would be “judged objectively” by the core group of coalition members.
These included a commitment to the rule of law, clean governance, building a professional public service and provision of quality services and infrastructure.