The ANC’s Bongi Sithole-Moloi with DA's Chris Pappas at the 2024 Elections Result Centre. In eThekwini, a minority government established after the 2000 elections, and in which we served, had significant political stability in large part because its Exco consisted of representatives from the major political parties: ANC, DA, IFP and the MF (Minority Front), all serving under an ANC mayor, the writer says. – Picture: Khaya Ngwenya / Independent Newspapers
By Sue Bannister and Michael Sutcliffe
Over the past 30 years, we have come a long way towards building a non-racial, non-sexist and united South Africa. Whilst our constitutional system, built on human rights, has been critical to that process, ensuring inclusivity in the political system has played a major role too.
The ANC’s constitutional proposals in the late 1980s started the process towards proportional representation, but all major parties to the negotiations in the 1990s accepted that a proportional system is best for our country compared to a first-past-the-post system on which apartheid governments were based.
Students of electoral systems then, and South Africans as a whole now, have come to realise that in all proportional representation systems, there is a tendency towards hung legislatures where no party has a majority of seats forever.
The simple reason for this is that proportionality means that all votes cast have a chance of leading to a person or party being elected and having a seat in the respective legislature. And democracy means political leaders are free to change parties and voters are free to vote for whoever they like.
The most recent national and provincial elections demonstrate this where the ANC, which has been a majority party at a national level in the previous six elections, has had its support reduced to just over 40% of the vote. The top eight parties receiving at least 1% of the overall ballots collectively received almost 95% of the votes across South Africa.
Another 10 parties managed to win seats in the National Assembly with less than 1% of the votes. It is important to note that some 34 parties who participated in the national elections received about 2% of the votes, but none of these received enough votes to win seats in the National Assembly.
It should be said that hung legislatures do not automatically require coalitions because it is possible to have minority governments where a president or mayor gets elected without any formal agreement between parties.
However, coalition agreements between parties can stabilise things, particularly if they are not simply attempts to cobble together “kingmakers” to vote in people into leadership positions.
“Kingmakers”, usually men, are small parties which when joining forces with a major party, allow the major party to get a majority of legislators but then often make demands that serve their personal interests.
Changes in leadership are often seen as promoting instability, but this does not always have to be the case. In the Western Cape, for example, some smaller municipalities have had frequent changes in mayors and speakers without any demonstrable impact on service delivery.
And even in eThekwini, a minority government established after the 2000 elections, and in which we served, had significant political stability in large part because its Exco consisted of representatives from the major political parties: ANC, DA, IFP and the MF (Minority Front), all serving under an ANC mayor, but with full rights to disagree in council on matters such as the budget.
Overall, though, in larger municipalities, frequent changes in political leadership have often had an impact on service delivery, often because cobbling together coalitions lead to an inward focus where each of the parties in a coalition has specific things they want “delivered” and this works against ensuring there are systems in place to deliver to all based on the approved Integrated Development Plan.
Currently, based on the 2021 local elections, only Cape Town, Buffalo City and Mangaung of the Category A municipalities have majority parties in charge of their local governments.
The remaining Category A’s (Johannesburg, eThekwini, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, Nelson Mandela Bay) and another 60 municipalities have “hung” legislatures.
If the elections were held now, based on the 2024 election results, we would have the same situation with the Category A municipalities, but would have 64 local municipalities with hung municipalities.
In all of these hung municipalities, and even in municipalities where there is a majority party, there are political, governance and administrative challenges, and in all of them, civic organisations and the public at large are left in the dark. The “hung” municipalities often become less responsive, less transparent, less competent and basic service delivery suffers as a result.
Ideally, what we should be asking of all parties which contest elections and then win seats, is that:
Stable coalitions do require transparency in their process of formation, particularly ensuring that the many communities of interest (labour, business, civil society, etc) are properly informed of what agreements have been made, and should ideally be provided with an opportunity to comment on such outcomes.
There is no doubt that democracy is under threat internationally. Not are many countries moving towards more authoritarian states, but over 50 democratic countries are now eroding, experiencing a statistically significant decline in at least one measure of democracy.
The number of recent coups d’état and unconstitutional transfers of power on our Continent is worrying, but in many of those contexts, it has resulted from increasing public frustration with corruption, self-serving leaders, among others.
That is why, while we must safeguard our proportionally representative electoral system, we must also ensure that any risks to the stability of our governments are urgently addressed.
* Sue Bannister and Michael Sutcliffe are Directors of City Insight
** The views expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of The African
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