The coalition dialogue, what does the governing party want?

The governing party convened a meeting at the University of the Western Cape to start a dialogue on coalition government arrangements. The "anyone but the ANC" posture taken by the opposition complex, which has plunged local government into a governance crisis, was a reawakening to the ANC of the leader of society role it still commands in South Africa. The coalition dialogue was thus about how to contest political power without collapsing the capability of the state to deliver goods and services. 

Despite all the speeches, press statements, and summits on coalitions, including high-level secret meetings between parties, the governing party has not yet answered the essential question: What outcome do they seek in the coalition dialogue? The truth is that the South African electoral system gives political parties an advantage to contest for state power; the interests and mandates voters give them will define coalitions. Despite the court ruling on the rights of individuals to challenge outside a party's political slate, the idea of a constituency-based electoral system will take time, at least another term, to mature. 

 

When pressed to answer the question, the governing party foregrounds its interests as the stability of the democratic order...In somewhat hushed tones, it emerges that they are focused on influencing the balance of forces to keep the ANC at the centre despite the prospect of a less than 50% majority in any political jurisdiction. However, the bona fides of the ANC-as-liberation-movement (ANC-as-LM) are unquestionable to the extent that they are acting in a leader of society mode. 

 

The absence of a vision and practical steps to show how the coalition as a governing party will change the woes of South Africa's service delivery challenges is dangerous. Society does not know the purpose of wanting to control how parties should manage their majority of minorities' mandates. The preoccupation with entitlement to govern despite failure to inspire voters to find a reason to return to the governing party is a settling demagoguery tearing the fabric of the political order. 

Likewise, framing the coalition arrangement in existential terms pushes the governing elite to pursue policies that seek the emerging opposition coalition to collapse while airbrushing the danger and self-harm that such a strategy would invite. Without a publicly known vision and strategy to pacify the risks of unmanageable coalitions in the national and provincial spheres, this risks the accumulated credibility of the ANC-as-LM as a South Africa belongs to all who live in its centric organisation. 

Civil society movements that still believe in the ideational prowess of the ANC, at least what is in its policy annals, have joined the issue-specific opposition complexes to hedge their relevance or social capital because, unlike before, they don't know the strategy about coalitions. These movements avoid being trapped in skirmishes with a well-funded opposition complex only to see the ANC-as-liberation movement abruptly abandoning what it stands for and exposing them to the wrath of the civil society funder complex. 

In the same way, as it sets the higher objective of dealing with apartheid and colonialism as a (global) crime against humanity, the ANC-as-LM should need to develop an objective on coalitions that would enjoy durable civil society support and be compatible with the will of the people priorities. As a standard, this posture should also allow civil society to anticipate the direction of the ANC-as-LM policy and its guiding logic or ideology. 

Despite the dearth of depth in articulating the ideological intents of the ANC-as-LM and the encroaching strange breeds of leaders via the ANC-as-a-political party, it still needs to address the unwillingness or inability to articulate its stance on coalitions in ideological terms. Such a stance should apply to in all its institutional personalities. It should be easy to do so if the NDR objectives are re-mainstreamed onto the centre of ANCness irrespective of in what frame of mind its many context-defined breeds of leaders are. 

If successful, the ANC-as-LM strategy on coalitions should entangle the opposition complex by achieving NDR objectives as the constitutionally correct thing to do. The normative appeal of the National Democratic Society ideal should be the path all coalitions choose and only have contestations on the how-to issues.  Preserving the constitutional order as the only substrate to sustain the democratic order should be the watermark of all coalition outcomes if the ANC-as-LM is ideologically focused in these dialogues. 

Any outcome outside this ideological posture should position anyone baulking at the NDR to be anti-constitutional order. It should make opposition to what the NDR is all about, which, arguably, is what a liberation promise-focused analysis would find the Constitution of South Africa to be, to be an affront on the rule of law the ANC had bequeathed to South Africa With all its service delivery imperfections, the ANC-as-LM should make any veering away from the liberation promise in the Constitution a political reputation risk of great proportions. 

With a rising youth bulge in the opposition complex, notably the reported voting trends at South Africa's higher education institutions and young professional ranks, the momentum of ideational influence is not tilting in favour of the ANC-as-LM. Whoever inherits this constituency will have the edge to grab an otherwise orphaned ideological hegemony space vacated by the ANC Youth League. Reliance on a memory-of-the-past-based ideation cohort or breed of leadership can only yield defensive postures to justify why things are not working instead of breaking new ground to make them work.