A significant political moment took place on the University of the Western Cape campus last week: the governing ANC and the official opposition, the DA, moved closer towards the possibility of a grand coalition in 2024.
This is possibly the single most significant political development of the year so far.
Something that seemed like a faint possibility a year ago is now being seriously considered by the two largest parties in South Africa's legislature.
How did we get here, and why is this a positive turn of events?
ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula told the conference on coalitions, "We are also keen to explore grand coalitions in order to ensure stability, service delivery and local development".
He confirmed to News24 he was referring to the DA.
Mbalula said the idea was currently limited to local government, but it is hard to believe that the ANC would not discuss a grand coalition with an eye on next year's national and provincial elections.
A grand coalition is when the two largest parties, neither having achieved 50% of the vote, work together in the interest of stability rather than making deals with smaller parties who often have enormous appetites.
The actions of rogue political entrepreneurs have forced the ANC and DA, representing about 80% of the South African electorate, to consider cooperation.
The ANC has bloodied its head in Gauteng, where the EFF has proved the most unreliable coalition partner in Ekurhuleni and Johannesburg.
Both municipalities are now led by minnow mayors from the AIC and Al Jama-ah, respectively, in what must be a low point in ANC history.
Luthuli House has all but pulled the plug on the ANC's tumultuous experiment with the EFF in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.
Outside the province, minnow parties, often led by single representatives who received as little as 8 000 votes, are pulling the strings in increasingly unstable municipal governments.
Twenty-four parties are represented in the eThekwini municipal council, where minnows with single seats hold sway; in Nelson Mandela Bay, the ANC removed the DA-led administration by handing the mayorship to a party with three seats.
Mbalula's comments at last week's seminal conference clearly indicate that the ANC had reached the end of its tether, dancing to the tunes of minor parties.
Both the ANC and DA have suggested introducing a threshold for representation at all three levels of government.
This is not an unusual or unique proposal: many countries worldwide have a threshold of between 1 and 8%, meaning parties who fail to achieve the threshold do not receive a seat in the House.
In some countries with minority groups, these parties are exempted from the threshold.
In the National Assembly, nine parties received less than 1% of the votes in 2019: the ACDP, UDM, NFP, ATM, GOOD, AIC, Cope, PAC and Al Jama-ah. These parties receive thousands of rand from the represented political parties' fund, and their MPs are well-remunerated.
Small parties have been livid about the ANC and DA's proposal of a threshold, but it is hard not to see a direct link between their criticism and the potential loss of income.
As we move closer to a coalition government at a national level, it is prudent to assess the contribution of minnow parties and their potentially destructive impact on service delivery based on the real examples from Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni, and Nelson Mandela Bay.
Moonshot pact
In 2024, 200 seats will be reserved for independent candidates, and there is an argument to be made that representatives of minnow parties should aim to win a seat in this block.
DA leader John Steenhuisen said their focus was on the convention for a moonshot pact scheduled for next week to unseat the ANC.
Steenhuisen can hardly confirm considering a grand coalition ahead of a convention where he will lead an attempt to form a united front against the ANC.
But, and this is a big BUT, nobody in the DA who has access to the internet and a calculator can be bullish that a pact with the IFP, ActionSA, the FF Plus and a few small parties will get them to 50% of the vote next year.
Together, in 2019, these parties collectively failed to reach 30% of the vote (given, ActionSA did not exist then, but even if Herman Mashaba's party has a spectacular run and reaches 10%, they will still struggle to get 50% together).
The moonshot pact is a noble exercise, and there are plenty of good reasons why the ANC has lost the authority to govern South Africa.
Still, realistically it will remain the largest party in the country after the 2024 polls, and a grand coalition with the DA is an exceedingly more attractive and stable option than opening the doors of the Union Building to the EFF and a few opportunistic political entrepreneurs.
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