Chris Chivers teaches religion and philosophy at UCL Academy, London. He was formerly canon precentor of St George’s Cathedral, Cape Town.
It’s a certainty that Helen Zille has been trying on the dress for weeks. She has always wanted to be deputy president. Now’s her chance. And on the face of it, there is much to commend the presence of the puppet mistress and her negotiating team.
The one thing against the Democratic Alliance — which is why they have never grown and will never grow their vote beyond the early twenties ceiling — is what the DP/NNP fault line long ago did for the votes of the majority of South Africans. A party prepared to embrace the lingering dinosaurs from the apartheid era was always going to be doomed for most of the electorate.
The DA became what the Progressive Party never was, namely a regressive party for white protectionism. This fault line has spawned the unattractive coloured tribalism of the Patriotic Alliance (PA) and Cape Coloured Congress (CCC) — because the DA hasn’t really been able to grow its coloured constituency either.
But in favour of the DA, undoubtedly, is the reality that they can deliver. In Cape Town, they deliver infrastructure to an urban population, albeit they provide MiCiti buses to ensure that black domestic workers are able to make it on time to Camps Bay and Clifton homes.
But beyond this hint of their favouritism to their own, at best they really can deliver. Bringing them into government could address the woeful lack of responsiveness to the most basic of issues — water, sanitation and electricity — on the part of the ANC, ironically, perhaps at its worst in the Eastern Cape where their vote held up.
Read more in Daily Maverick: Elections Dashboard
South Africa desperately needs infrastructure delivery. Who knows, the DA’s proven ability to deliver — at least for their own constituency — might inspire them to do so in Khayelitsha where the kak still floats with abandon through the streets — and also in the poorest communities across the country where action is most needed, not least in the visible decay of cities like Pietermaritzburg.
The DA has the appetite to govern, and the intelligence and commitment on the part of its best players to do so. Give them the right portfolios and they could even make the ANC look good.
Five years of Ms Zille’s poorly judged and ‘unwoke’ tweeting could be worth bearing for the undoubtedly positive outcomes it would bring.
Read more in Daily Maverick: Life under DA in Western Cape — fact-checking opposition party’s claims on governance
As well as making the ANC look good, it would keep out the right-wing horrors of the EFF and MK. Though how the country deals with the threatening language and inflammatory instincts of Jacob Zuma will certainly be a critical part of the whole piece.
It would also have the added benefit of finishing the DA off as an electoral force. Look at what happened to the Liberal Democrats in the UK. They joined forces with David Cameron’s compassionate Conservatives. They formed a more than half-decent administration that addressed some of the most pressing financial issues. For their troubles they were annihilated.
This is what tends to happen to the junior partners in any coalition. They are punished by the electorate for whatever real value they actually contribute to the common good.
This would greatly be to the ANC’s advantage, of course. But it would also benefit the whole of South Africa which needs a new opposition party in which all South Africans may feel confident. The DA — for all the gifts of many within it — will never be this in a million years. It is frankly perceived as being for the whiteys.
So bring on a coalition of the ANC and DA. Add in the IFP — though make sure to ask them to take off those pictures of the late Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi that adorned their posters. As a Capetonian said to me at the station the other day, “Ag, I thought he’d gone to be with Jesus!” Who knows, maybe his hovering presence was the reason their vote increased?
Keep out the frankly right-wing ranting of the EFF and MK no matter how much they howl. And give Rise Mzansi — with their two MPs — a reflective piece of advice: be more careful from whom you take R15-million next time. It cost you dearly at the ballot box. For you were the party many across the political and ethnic spectrum would have trusted if you’d better understood the sensitivities of that donation.
Mention of which should of course caution against easy talk of any possible coalition. For while domestic policy-making may be a relative walk in the park, matching up the stances of the ANC and DA on Gaza, Palestine and Israel? Now that may take some real magic. It’s the kind though that Cyril Ramaphosa has conjured once before when he brought us democracy with Roelf Meyer.
There is no reason why he could not do so again. Now might just be the moment for us to see not the hitherto rather mediocre and indecisive Ramaphosa we have come to expect, but the very best of a negotiator and fixer who undoubtedly has both the intellectual capacity and the human instinct to understand an opponent’s position.
And who has a track record of delivery not only to bring the beloved country the stability it needs – and only an ANC-DA-IFP coalition can do this – but actually to reignite the very hope born 30 years ago. DM
