President Cyril Ramaphosa. File photo by GCIS
President Cyril Ramaphosa says the ANC will not be considering coalition partners in the upcoming national elections.
“The ANC is going to achieve an outright majority. We are not working to be in a coalition but if we have to choose a coalition party, we will choose the ANC to be a coalition partner.”
He added that the party was confident that it would emerge victorious in next year’s elections.
“Many people in our country still see the ANC as the only vehicle that can continue with the transformation process and make it better,” he said.
Ramaphosa was speaking during an editorial engagement session where he said the ANC was confident in its strategy to win elections.
The engagements happened on the eve of the party plans to review its 2019 Election Manifesto taking place on Sunday at the Dobsonville Stadium in Soweto.
Ramphosa said the party is on a campaign to analyse the 2019 Election Manifesto after which it will give communities feedback on the commitment it made.
Ramaphosa said the ANC had implemented over 70% of the commitments it made in its 2019 election manifesto.
“So in this discussion, we need to acknowledge the massive damage that was caused to our economy and our society by some of the devastating processes that we have been through.
Covid-19 being one of them, 2021 unrest being another, climate change that manifested itself through floods being another and how we responded as a government to address the challenges our people were facing,” he said.
Ramaphosa made the remarks even though the party continues to lose power in by-elections, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal, where it has lost ground, mostly to the Inkatha Freedom Party.
According to the latest figures from Stats SA, the unemployment rate – which currently stands at 32.9 % – has dropped significantly since the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite those results it noted that the unemployment rate is still 2% higher than before the pandemic.
He added that despite pressure from the multiparty launched last month by seven parties, the ANC was relying on its tripartite partners to support it to victory.
He said: “We are not working to be in a coalition, The majority of people who have always voted for the ANC still see the ANC as the only vehicle for the transformation process in the country, to consolidate it and make it better.”
Last month, a group of South African opposition parties agreed to form a coalition government called a Multi-Party Charter for South Africa, to unseat the ANC from power and end its three-decade hold on power.
The seven signatory parties to the Multi-Party Charter also agreed that they won’t enter into any “working arrangement or co-governing agreements” with the ANC or the populist Economic Freedom Fighters at national or provincial level.
The initiative involves the leaders of the Democratic Alliance (DA), the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), ActionSA, the Freedom Front Plus, the United Independents Movement, the Spectrum National Party and Isanco, a breakaway from the South African National Civic Organisation.
The Mail & Guardian reported that the parties had been discussing the coalition proposal, first mooted by DA leader John Steenhuisen in April, for several months and are half way through a two-day convention called to hammer out a pre-election agreement.
The ANC and the EFF have used smaller parties, like Al Jama-ah in Joburg, African Transformation Movement in Tshwane and the African Independent Congress in Ekurhuleni, to form coalition deals.
In July, ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula said the ruling party was not considering coalitions with smaller parties at a national level because parties with 2% voter support had attempted to hijack and collapse efforts to tighten laws on coalition governments.
“You cannot come with 2% and want to hold the process hostage, which helps push the country’s momentum forward. And then you bow out and run politics with tactics of threats. Those tactics cannot hold us back,” Mbalula said.
Mbalula said coalition legislation spoke to forcing the biggest winners of the voting pie to pull together to form a coalition government.
“A grand coalition means you are voted as the four big parties and you form a coalition. The current arrangement is political where parties can gang-up against the party which has more numbers to govern the city. In this situation, even a party with the smallest support can have the mayor, and citizens ask questions about how that is possible. There is no regulation,” he said.