By Nthabiseng Lerotholi
At a time when locally, provincially, and nationally, coalitions are the order of the day, there is a need to keep voters and the public informed about these developments in South Africa’s political landscape. This will help create an environment where we have a better understanding of power-sharing as a viable form of governance. Understanding which coalitions are in power, how power will be shared, and how coalition governments operate, can empower citizens to make more informed political choices and better hold their leaders to account.
Knowing which parties are considering going into a coalition, or may already have done so, is most crucial from the perspective of the voter before an election. If a voter knows that their party of choice may join other parties that the voter opposes on policy or ideology, it may impact who they ultimately vote for. Perhaps something we need to be considering is a more transparent approach to coalition considerations prior to voting. By incorporating coalition considerations – be they actual agreements, pre-election pacts, or potential partnerships of other natures, – into the long-established and well understood process of election manifestos, political parties candidates can contribute towards intensifying access to information for voters to make a more informed decision.
Why coalition agreements need to be public
The Local Government: Municipal Structures Amendment Bill of 2024, also known as the Coalitions Bill, is the first piece of legislation that aims to regulate the formation and stability of coalition government in South Africa. While it only focuses on the local level, it may serve as a foundation for other levels of government. The Bill, amongst several other proposed amendments, calls for political parties to publish ‘binding’ coalition agreements. The Bill motivates the benefit of this is that a “coalition agreement enables the constituencies to hold the executive and political parties concerned for failure to deliver on certain agreed terms resulting in important service delivery”.
It is essential that we have access to coalition agreements to serve as a tracking and monitoring tool the public can use after the elections to ensure there is accountability. But, if we have coalition considerations or agreements before we go vote, there is an enormous advantage for voter.
We do not expect political parties to always follow through with their coalition plans, because politics is fluid and parties that one day were considering joining forces may be enemies the next. But, knowing at the very least, for example, that party A is considering a coalition with parties B and C, and is ruling out the possibility of joining with parties D and E, is powerful information for a voter. If, after the election, parties do not hold true to these convictions, the voter may choose to sanction them by not supporting them further. But providing no information or indications of coalition plans leaves the voter in the dark and diminishes their ability to vote from an informed position.
Leveraging traditional election campaigning to disseminate coalition information
Election manifestos are the go-to encyclopedia to comprehend a political party or an independent candidate. Political contestants use manifestos to communicate their ideologies, policy positions, vision, intentions, strategies and priority areas. Through interrogating manifestos, citizens get a better understanding of the position of a political party or independent candidate and this helps us to compare and distinguish differences between them. The timing of the dissemination of manifestos matters and these documents are always released in the run up to the election period.
All eighteen political parties that make up the 7th administration released a manifesto in the run up to the 2024 elections, making manifestos an operative vehicle to share coalition considerations or agreements.
What should parties communicate before an election?
If observations from local government coalitions and the formation of the Government of National Unity are anything to go by, then any political party, big or small, can enter a coalition. In 2024, the ANC lost its majority nationally for the first time in 30 years, and coalitions emerged in several provinces. At the municipal level, coalitions have been a common feature of our political landscape for decades, but the number of local coalitions has increased dramatically in recent years. Around one in every three municipalities is currently governed by a coalition.
Coalition politics is becoming more entrenched in our political system, which, as this article explains, is partly a result of our proportional representation electoral system. There is also an increase in the number of political parties contesting for power. What this means is that political parties will need to focus more on strategically identifying allies, alignments, and misalignments as they calculate their potential partners.
In South Africa the law recognises that the right to exercise political rights, including the right to vote, is undermined and unjustly limited when that vote is uninformed. For example, the Political Funding Act provides us with crucial information about the funding of our politics. This information is essential when voting. Similarly, as voters, we should expect those who are contesting for power to share information about their political partnerships. To vote from a more informed position, the information in a manifesto should include:
• Any party or parties that a political party has already formed a coalition with;
• Any party or parties that a political party is considering forming a coalition with; and
• Any party or parties that a political party would never consider going into a coalition with.
Action SA and the VF Plus were two of only a few political parties in the to dedicate a section of their respective 2024 manifestos to unpacking coalitions. The former laid down the conditions for entering into a coalition agreement and ensured its voter base (citizens perusing their manifesto) that its organizational values will not be compromised, and it will advance the interests of its constituents. True to its word, the party did not wish to join the Government of National Unity but instead decided to remain ‘unofficial opposition’ in Parliament. VF Plus claimed in its manifesto that it will fight within the coalition government for voter’s rights. The party became the seventh party to join the GNU.
Conclusion
Institutionalizing a political culture that issues coalition considerations and agreements before elections minimizes the level of secrecy around closed-door negotiations. But we are already in a somewhat new political context where coalition agreements are considered essential tools. What we need to do now is go further and make them a real part of our politics. If voters would know before heading to the ballot box who their preferred political party will be entering a coalition agreement with and the basis of the agreement, this is extremely empowering. Furthermore, post-election, voters can find out the consistency of their preferred party concerning the coalition agreement by looking at what compromises their party may have made and if their values had been forgotten or upheld.
With the 2026 local government elections looming, and as coalitions become embedded in our politics, we as voters need to think about and request information instrumental in helping us navigate this terrain. Including coalition considerations and agreements in manifestos could be an important development to deepen political understanding and participation.
Nthabiseng Lerotholi interned with My Vote Counts in 2024.
