WeeklySA_AdminRHETORIC: As parties draw ideological battle lines over coalition partners, Themba Khumalo argues that voters deserve leaders who can negotiate, compromise and deliver functioning municipalities…
By Themba Khumalo
South Africa’s politicians have turned coalition politics into an ideological tug-of-war. Everybody wants to dictate who should work with whom, who should be excluded and whose political convictions should prevail.
The one thing that seems to escape them is that municipalities cannot run on ideological declarations. They need coalitions capable of governing, making decisions and delivering basic services.
The 2026 local government election has left political parties with a clear message from voters. No party can take the electorate for granted, and no party can assume it will govern everywhere on its own. The arithmetic has changed. Coalition-building is no longer a political inconvenience that parties can wish away. It is the reality they must confront.
Yet, instead of approaching this moment with political maturity, our leaders are busy drawing ideological battle lines, nursing egos and announcing whom they refuse to work with.
At Birchwood Hotel in Boksburg on Thursday, the Conference of the Left assembled to tell the country who it would not work with, who should be thrown out of the Government of National Unity (GNU), why the ANC should join its political project and why nobody should entertain the idea that it might return to the ANC if Cyril Ramaphosa were to resign.
They cannot eat ideological declarations.
They cannot drink revolutionary rhetoric…
One could be forgiven for wondering whether these people have been paying attention to what is happening outside their conference rooms.
The country is crying out for competent local government. Politicians are busy drawing ideological battle lines.
Advocate Dali Mpofu, delivering a joint statement on behalf of the grouping, made it abundantly clear that the parties would not support ANC-led coalitions with the Democratic Alliance in hung municipalities. The grouping also dismissed suggestions that Ramaphosa’s departure would persuade its constituent organisations to return to the ANC.
Well, congratulations. The country has been informed.
But what exactly are ordinary people supposed to do with this information? Frame it and hang it on the wall? Take it to the municipal offices when their water has been cut off? Read it to the children when the electricity goes out and the family cannot afford another day of inconvenience?
There is a limit to how much political grandstanding people can stomach.
Nobody is suggesting that political parties must abandon their principles or pretend that ideological differences do not exist. They are entitled to disagree with the DA, reject the GNU, oppose the ANC and refuse to enter coalitions they consider unacceptable. That is politics.
But politics is also about responsibility. It is about understanding that the people who put you in office have lives to live, families to feed and bills to pay. They cannot eat ideological declarations. They cannot drink revolutionary rhetoric. They cannot drive through potholes on the strength of a party’s political convictions.
And they certainly cannot afford to have their municipalities turned into casualties of politicians’ personal and ideological battles.
Mpofu told the briefing that the organisations represented by the Conference of the Left had collectively secured just over 20% of the popular vote. He was right to point out that those votes came from people and should be acknowledged.
But there is a rather inconvenient part of that argument that seems to have escaped the political excitement. Those votes were entrusted to political parties to do something useful with them.
They were not handed out as trophies for politicians to admire.
If anything, the election results should have made every political leader a little less arrogant. The days when parties could take voters for granted are numbered. People are moving their votes, punishing poor performance and making it increasingly difficult for political organisations to govern without negotiating with others.
That is not an invitation for politicians to become even more precious about their political identities. It is a demand that they grow up.
Then there is the grand declaration about the GNU.
The Conference of the Left wants the DA and Freedom Front Plus removed from the arrangement. Mpofu described them as right-wing reactionary forces and took a swipe at what he called their satellite organisations funded by the Oppenheimers.
There is little reason to pretend that these ideological differences are imaginary. Both parties occupy the right of the political spectrum and have, at various points, shown hostility or disdain towards programmes intended to redress apartheid’s enduring economic inequalities and transform patterns of ownership. Their positions deserve to be challenged, interrogated and opposed where necessary.
But recognising these ideological differences does not absolve the Conference of the Left, or anyone else, of the responsibility to explain what comes next.
What exactly is the political alternative? How will the proposed realignment improve the lives of working people and poor communities? What will it mean for municipalities struggling to provide even the most basic services?
There is a difference between knowing who your political opponents are and having a workable programme for governing alongside those with whom you disagree. Political convictions are important, but they cannot become an excuse for avoiding the hard business of government.
The same applies to the ANC, which has its own spectacular contribution to this mess.
The ANC has suffered a serious electoral setback. Its support has been eroded, its political dominance has been challenged and it now faces the uncomfortable reality of having to negotiate for power in municipalities where it once expected to govern without much difficulty.
Yet even in this moment, the ANC appears unable to escape the politics of personalities and internal survival.
Ramaphosa is going nowhere, we are told. The president’s position is apparently not up for discussion, despite the calls for him to step aside following the party’s electoral performance.
Meanwhile, the Conference of the Left wants the country to know that Ramaphosa’s departure would not bring it running back to the ANC.
Good grief. Must everything in this country revolve around Cyril Ramaphosa?
The ANC has problems much bigger than the political future of one man. Its electoral decline cannot be explained away by changing a president, just as the country’s municipal failures cannot be repaired by changing coalition partners.
And Mpofu himself made a perfectly reasonable observation when he questioned what Ramaphosa’s resignation had to do with local government.
Precisely.
But the same question should be put to the entire political establishment. What does all this political theatre have to do with the desperate need for municipalities that work?
The Conference of the Left wants to unite progressive forces. The ANC wants to preserve its influence. The DA wants to expand its political footprint. Other parties want their share of municipal power. Everybody has a project. Everybody has a position to defend. Everybody seems convinced that their political calculations deserve the country’s undivided attention.
But where, in all this self-importance, is the ordinary voter?
Where is the mother who has to organise her household around an unreliable water supply? Where is the pensioner who cannot get a municipal complaint resolved? Where is the family living next to an overflowing sewer? Where is the young person who sees politicians fighting over mayoral positions while the municipality cannot even keep its streets clean?
These people do not have the luxury of ideological theatre. Their problems do not go on holiday while political parties negotiate.
A coalition is not a marriage of convenience between politicians who want to keep their hands on power. It is a working arrangement that must produce results. It requires people who can negotiate, compromise and accept that governing together sometimes means swallowing political pride.
That is the part our politicians seem to find so difficult.
They want the positions without the responsibility, the influence without the accountability and the recognition without the hard work. They want to be treated as important political figures even when the people they represent have very little to show for their time in office.
And when voters become impatient, politicians act surprised.
The 2026 local government election should have delivered a sobering lesson. No party owns the electorate. No liberation history, revolutionary pedigree or ideological label gives anyone a permanent right to govern. Voters are entitled to withdraw their support, and political parties must learn to live with that reality. There is no shortage of politicians in South Africa who can deliver a fiery speech about the enemies of the people. What we desperately need are politicians who can actually do something for the people.
The country does not need another gathering at which political leaders congratulate one another, exchange ideological warnings and announce who they refuse to work with. It needs people prepared to sit around a table, leave their egos at the door and negotiate arrangements that give municipalities a fighting chance.
The tap does not know whether its mayor belongs to the left or the right. The sewage running down a residential street does not recognise revolutionary credentials. A pothole is not impressed by a politician’s opposition to the Oppenheimers. And a family struggling to make ends meet has no interest in whether the DA, ANC, EFF or MK Party wins another round of political chest-thumping.
They want their municipality to work. Is it really too much to ask politicians seeking municipal power to make sure that the municipalities they want to govern actually work?
Apparently, for some of our politicians, it is not only difficult but near impossible.
