MMUSI MAIMANE | South Africa’s coalition table needs a fourth leg

South Africa’s coalition politics is conveniently presented as a binary choice between two outcomes. Voters are incorrectly told, I’d argue, that it is either an ANC-led arrangement with the DA as an ostensibly reluctant party or an ANC-led arrangement with the EFF and/or MK Party.

This second option, we’re told, will write the country’s democratic-era obituary with its recklessness and radical ideology. South Africa’s political table currently has three legs.

Those being the ANC, the DA and the collection of parties on the other side of the political spectrum, increasingly represented by the EFF and MK Party. Every coalition negotiation and municipal power struggle takes place around that three-legged table.

And the problem with a three-legged table is that it can stand. But it cannot stand securely if the weight placed on it is constantly shifting. The missing leg is a pragmatic, centrist political force prepared to work with others without becoming captured by them. That is where Bosa has a role to play.

Because coalitions are not going away. The 2024 election made that clear at the national level. The ANC lost its majority for the first time since 1994, forcing it into a government of national unity. At the local level, coalition government has already become a prominent feature of our political landscape.

The ANC and DA have spent considerable political energy negotiating with one another. Yet their relationship is constrained by the reality that neither party can afford to push the other too far. The DA fears that if it pushes the ANC too hard, the ANC may simply look elsewhere and form an alternative arrangement with parties such as the EFF or MK.

The ANC, meanwhile, knows that the DA has limited room to manoeuvre if it wants to prevent precisely that outcome.

Whether the ANC governs with the DA or with other parties, the ANC remains at the centre of the system. It remains the hegemonic mainstay of the political terrain.

What is missing is not a different combination of political parties around the table. We need to change the balance of that table. We need a fourth leg that stabilises the table and changes the conversation.

A party such as Bosa can enter a coalition as a force with clear principles about what government must deliver. I forward three propositions. One, put us in the room. Citizens deserve a voice in coalition negotiations that is focused on outcomes rather than political power.

The second is what we bring into that room. An undeniable commitment to constitutionalism, clean government, capable institutions, accountability and practical reform. We are not interested in choosing between the ANC’s patronage politics, the DA’s privatisation, and the dangerous populism of the EFF and MK Party.

And third, we bring an economic plan. This matters because South Africa’s problems are not only problems of poor governance. They are also problems of economic policy and the lack of economic growth.

Our economy remains trapped by policies that are too often old, outdated and comfortable. We have an unemployment crisis. Economic growth remains far below what is required to absorb millions of people into work.