Coalition Country. Leon Schreiber

cent, the ANC 41.48 per cent, and the EFF 11.64 per cent. In both of these cases, it is easy to see how the EFF played an important role in keeping both the ANC and DA below the 50 per cent threshold. Aside from its impact on the metro results, the EFF also made significant gains in parts of the North West and Limpopo.

      In Rustenburg, it dragged down the ANC’s share of the vote from 73.82 per cent in 2011 to a mere 48.27 per cent in 2016, and the DA’s from 20.29 per cent to 15.90 per cent, while the EFF itself won 26.44 per cent of the vote during its first election in Rustenburg. It had a similar impact in Polokwane – Julius Malema’s home town – where the ANC’s share of the vote dropped precipitously from 80.24 per cent to 57.20 per cent, and the DA’s from 11.43 per cent to 10.91 per cent, with the EFF taking 28.33 per cent.

      But despite its relatively rapid rise in some isolated regions as well as its high national Parliamentary and media profile, 91 out of every 100 South Africans have never voted for the EFF, and the party has never attempted to govern even one municipality, let alone a province. In terms of hard numbers, and in the bigger scheme of the country’s politics, the EFF remains a fringe player that has a long way to go to gain anything approaching a dominant position at any level of government.

      The final opposition parties to consider are the IFP and its breakaway, the National Freedom Party (NFP). It may be difficult to recall today, but during the 1990s, the IFP posed one of the greatest potential threats to ANC hegemony. The party dominated local and provincial politics in KwaZulu-Natal, and as a Zulu ethnic-based formation, it theoretically had the potential to cause a split within the ANC along ethnic lines. At more than 20 per cent of the population, Zulus constitute the single largest ethnic bloc in South Africa. If the IFP had managed to unite all Zulu voters under its flag, it could have seriously damaged the ANC’s standing as a dominant force among black voters.

      That did not happen. Instead, the ANC slowly ate into the IFP’s support in KwaZulu-Natal, eventually winning outright control of the province in 2009. The IFP was further weakened when, in 2011, a faction of its leaders defected to form the ANC-aligned NFP. The newly formed party garnered more than 10 per cent of the votes in KwaZulu-Natal in the 2011 election, reducing the once provincially mighty IFP to only 15 per cent support in the province. The split in the IFP, coupled with its precipitous decline over the past two decades and its inability to break out of its ethnic enclave, means that both the IFP and the NFP have no chance of becoming a nationally dominant electoral force.

      Figure 7 summarises the current state of play among opposition parties. With 27.02 per cent of the vote in 2016, the DA is clearly the best placed to challenge the ANC. But while the DA’s recent growth has been impressive, it would need to almost double its current share of the vote to gain an outright national majority. The voting shares of all other opposition parties remain below 10 per cent, which means they have no realistic chance of becoming a dominant force in South African politics in the near future.

      Source: Electoral Commission of South Africa.

      What about a party that doesn’t yet exist, or has never fought an election? Given the growing tensions in the ANC alliance, one or more ANC splinter groups could contest the 2019 elections. This could include a workers’ party established by SAFTU, the labour federation formed by former Cosatu secretary-general Zwelinzima Vavi. The SACP could also follow up its contestation of the Metsimaholo by-election in November 2017 by fielding its own candidates independently of the ANC in 2019. However, recent history tells us that any ANC splinter party would struggle to garner even 8 per cent of the national vote during its first few elections.

      COPE was the first major group to defect from the ANC after Thabo Mbeki’s recall. Founded in 2008, COPE won 7.42 per cent of the national vote in 2011. However, the party was soon crippled by leadership squabbles, and its support collapsed to 0.48 per cent in the 2016 elections. The second ANC splinter group, the EFF, won only 6.35 per cent of the vote in its first election in 2014, increasing to 8.31 per cent in 2016. Based on the experiences of COPE and the EFF, it is highly unlikely that new ANC spinoff parties would fare much better during the next decade.

      However, as was made abundantly clear in the Metsimaholo by-election, more breakaways would further weaken the ANC. With the party already in danger of losing the national government as well as the Western Cape, Gauteng and even North West in 2019, the loss of another 8–10 per cent of support to splinter groups would be catastrophic. While further splits in the ANC are unlikely to suddenly produce a new dominant player, they are sure to hasten the ANC’s decline as the hegemonic party.

      The reality is that South Africa’s opposition party landscape is highly fragmented. Over the first 20 years of democracy, an ever shifting constellation of opposition groups have fought over the scraps as the mighty ANC kept chugging along. But now that the ANC is faltering, the fractured nature of opposition politics means that no single group stands at the ready to replace the ANC as a hegemonic force. If and when support for the ANC drops below 50 per cent, it will probably still be the biggest political grouping in the country. But it will no longer be the first among equals. Without an overwhelming majority that empowers the party to ride roughshod over the coalition requirements of South Africa’s electoral framework, a humbled ANC will find itself in the same position as all other parties: struggling to cobble together governing alliances. With no opposition party in a position to replace the ANC as the first among equals, the coalition era will suddenly be in full swing.

      The end of forever

      Two key ingredients are necessary to bake a coalition cake. First, a country must have a set of electoral rules that encourage the formation of coalition governments. Second, no single political party should be able to consistently obtain electoral majorities on its own. Instead, for coalitions to become the norm, political power must be dispersed in relatively even proportion among different political parties. Since 1994, South Africa always had the first ingredient in its cupboard, but the ANC’s electoral dominance meant that it lacked the second. Historian Hermann Giliomee’s prediction in 1998 that ‘The ANC [is] atop a dominant-party regime that figures to endure through the elections scheduled for 1999, 2004, and beyond’9 has been proven correct.

      But although Jacob Zuma may still think that the ANC will rule forever, ‘forever’ is fast coming to an end. The dominant-party regime is dying. The ANC’s falling fortunes mean that, after 2019, political support will probably be divided much more evenly among South Africa’s political parties. Once this second ingredient is in place, coalition governments will follow.

      What remains to be seen is whether this coalition cake will actually be a good one. After all, there is more to becoming a successful baker than just mixing together different ingredients. Just as a good cake requires the baker to understand the thermodynamics of baking, so too do political leaders and citizens require a firm understanding of the dynamics inherent in coalition governments if they are to succeed.

      From 2019 onwards, any government’s efforts to improve the lives of ordinary South Africans will depend above all on their ability to build and manage successful coalitions.