The floor-crossing window, which opens next month, could diminish further the strength of most opposition parties.
For the first time this year the floor-crossing window for national and provincial MPs will coincide with that for municipal councillors.
The 11 opposition parties, which control 121 seats in the 400-seat National Assembly, are expected to lose more members to the ruling African National Congress (ANC), which already has 279 seats.
Floor-crossing is expected to change the composition of hung municipalities in KwaZulu-Natal — Ndwendwe, Amajuba and Newcastle — and the Western Cape, where only four of the 26 municipalities were won with an outright majority.
The opposition has a significant presence in the Western Cape, where the Democratic Alliance (DA) leads the Cape Town metropolitan municipality, and in KwaZulu-Natal, where the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) controls 36 of 61 municipalities and where a mooted coalition of opposition parties might threaten the ANC’s grip on the province.
Jonathan Faull, a political researcher at the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa), warns there are tough times ahead for the six parties founded on the drifting sands of floor-crossing.
”The record of parties formed through floor-crossing shows they are the most vulnerable ones. The Independent Democrats [ID] is the only party that has survived a floor-crossing window and continues to do well in an election,” he says.
The parties — the National Democratic Convention (Nadeco), ID, United Independent Front, United Party of South Africa, Federation of Democrats and the Progressive Independent Movement — have battled to form branches or establish strong roots in communities.
Faull says the parties have been thrown into turmoil because they attract disgruntled people seeking to re-establish their flagging careers. The parties continue to be personal fiefdoms of party founders.
”The absence of real structures such as branches and membership means party bosses are not held accountable and the parties do not promote internal democracy. This makes them fertile ground for the emergence of conspiracies and back-stabbing,” says Faull.
Nadeco, founded by former IFP national chair Ziba Jiyane, is expected to lose the most in the coming window with councillors likely to defect back to the IFP. Nadeco members are streaming back to the IFP after Jiyane’s rival, Hawu Mbatha, forced Jiyane out of the party.
The window could see the demise of the late Malizole Diko’s United Independent Front, a splinter party of Bantu Holomisa’s United Democratic Movement.
Internal bickering over positions since Diko’s death in July last year has dogged the party.
Its new leadership has failed to fill Diko’s seat in the National Assembly and has approached the courts to decide who should fill the seat.
Parties — such as the Federation of Democrats, founded by former African Christian Democratic Party MPs Louis Green and Rhoda Southgate and MPL Kevin Southgate — are likely to disintegrate or form new alliances.
Political analyst William Gumede, the author of Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC, says the perilous state of South Africa’s opposition parties is the biggest weakness of the country’s democracy. He says black voters do not see opposition parties as being relevant.
”Obviously, they are not lame ducks, they criticise the ruling party very loudly and so on. However, they are not positioning themselves to be in government. They are rather too oppositionist. Instead of coming up with relevant policy [aimed at the majority black population] platforms, they actually appear to live only to attack the ANC,” says Gumede.
Former DA leader Tony Leon says the fragmentation of the opposition has weakened it and strengthened the ANC’s grip on power.
Leon says the disarray in most emerging parties stems from the fact that ”they have no roots, no philosophy, no history — in short, none of the vital underpinnings that hold political organisations together in rough weather. This makes them ineffective and riddled with internal conflict, mostly stemming from disputes over access to perks and privileges. The surfeit of tiny parties serves only to split the opposition vote and plays into the hands of the ANC, hence its continued support for floor-crossing,” says Leon.
IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi, writing in his weekly online letter, says: ”Since its introduction [in 2002], floor-crossing has deepened the electorate’s disenchantment with the political process, brought into question the value of voting at all and, generally, undermined multiÂparty democracy.”
Gumede suggests that successful political parties throughout the past 100 years in South Africa have been more than just political parties that become operational only during elections.
”During its heyday, for example, the National Party had branches all over the country. These branches were almost like social institutions, like the church. They would provide everything from helping with funerals to friendship and human solidarity. The same was the case with the ANC. It looked after people, helped to find bursaries, buried people and so on,” says Gumede.