There is widespread agreement that South Africa’s watershed introduction to coalition governance has been characterised by volatility, hostility, and scepticism.
It is therefore no surprise that a considerable number of ideas, some purporting to be solutions, have been proposed by many observers and commentators, to bring some form of stability to coalitions.
While any proposal is a healthier start than no proposal at all, each one needs to be measured on its merit and practical application, before concluding it is a silver bullet to coalition chaos.
One such idea that has been romanticised, is the advocacy of the executive committee structure in municipalities to replace the executive mayoral structure in coalition governments.
The great majority of South Africans would hardly know the difference between the two, and understandably so. Local governance is already a complex sphere of administration, and the differences between municipal executive structures would hardly be included in the dinner table agenda, so long as potholes and streetlights are attended to, right?
Nonetheless, passively believing the opinion that the executive committee structure is a silver bullet may prove disappointing for many.
Firstly, what are the salient differences between the executive committee and mayoral committee structures as defined by the Municipal Structures Act?
In the more commonly employed executive mayoral structure, such as in all Western Cape municipalities as well as the Gauteng metros, the council elects one of its members as a mayor, who in turn, holds an array of executive powers conferred by legislation, as well as the municipality’s system of delegations. Added to this, the mayor is empowered to appoint or dismiss any councillor as a member of their mayoral committee (MMC) while each MMC is the political head responsible for a portfolio/s.
In the executive committee structure, exclusively adopted in all KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo municipalities, parties and political interests represented in the council are proportionally awarded seats on that municipality’s executive committee (Exco). The number of Exco seats is formulaically determined by the size of the council.
This usually results in larger parties gaining representation on the Exco, while small or tiny parties remain outside the executive. The council can only elect an Exco member as the mayor (who does not carry the title of executive mayor), while the executive powers lie with the Exco as a collective. The Exco members divide up the portfolios among each other at their discretion and each take political responsibility for it on behalf of the Exco.
Sounds quite dreamy? Not entirely. While academics and civil society have latched onto the fabric of hope that the executive committee structure would bring stability in municipal councils by forcing larger parties to govern together at the exclusion of smaller, disrupter parties, this interpretation disregards the actual source of political instability in municipalities, which is the composition of very fractured councils themselves.
The faith in the executive committee structure also assumes that the larger parties would want to govern together, when in fact they may be polar opposites and simply cannot coalesce.
If this is the case, the larger party that has the mayoral position, may not be able to muster a majority within the Exco, and thus cannot refer Exco delegated items to council. Further to this, the larger governing party would need to attract the support of the majority in council to pass items such as budgets, loans, and by-laws.
With the South African coalition experience largely dictated by patronage politics, if there are no executive positions to award to smaller parties not represented on the Exco, these parties may not feel incentivised to support the Mayor’s party within the council, as they are not part of the executive, and thus not necessarily party to the coalition government.
If a budget is not passed, the council collapses, and the municipality is placed in grave risk.
On the other hand, the executive mayoral structure enables a mayor from a larger party an opportunity to build a stable coalition, through allocating MMC positions to other parties that help the coalition achieve that critical 50 per cent plus one.
But there is hope for coalition stability in South Africa. Viable solutions have been put forward in the form of current legislation tabled in Parliament sponsored by the DA that includes introducing an electoral threshold so that seats in councils, provincial legislatures, and national parliament are not allocated to parties who get less than a basic minimum percentage of the vote. Included in the DA’s legislation package is a limit on the number of times a motion of no confidence can be tabled against a political office bearer annually.
The above are just some of the practical, international best practice solutions that can reform South African coalition politics for the better.
Joshua Dickinson is a Senior Specialist for Governance and Strategy in the DA. He previously worked in Parliament and the Gauteng Provincial Legislature for the DA and is former lecturer in business communications. He writes in his personal capacity.
