The 2024 election in South Africa is likely to be one of the most pivotal moments in our post-1994 democratic history. After years of government mismanagement, the ANC’s support levels have fallen to a historic low and the party seems set to lose its parliamentary majority.

For the opposition parties this represents a huge opportunity, as we move towards a new, coalition government. This raises the questions, who, exactly, makes up the opposition in the South African parliament and what makes them different to the current government?

It is these questions that I am trying to answer with my podcast series ‘In Opposition’. Through a series of long form conversations with the party leaders of the various opposition parties I try to learn about who the various opposition parties are and what they stand for.

The discussions revolve primarily around what I see as the major political issues currently facing South Africa, namely: corruption, crime, service delivery, education and unemployment. The parties that you should seriously consider for where your vote in the next election goes need to present a coherent, realistic plan on how they will tackle these issues.

Alongside the focus on the major political challenges the country faces there is another set of questions that I pose which are vital to the next election and beyond, who the parties are willing to go into coalition with. A coalition government is the most likely successor to the ANC and it is critical that every party clearly states what their intentions are when it comes to coalitions.

Beyond that, the conversations then revolve around party-specific issues. This means that when I sat down with John Steenhuisen we talked about the ‘black-exit’ out of the DA; with the ATM about their alleged connections with Jacob Zuma; and what the Freedom Front plus means when they talk about the necessity of ‘self-determination’.

It is in these particular issues where you find the most divergence between the parties, as it turns out that most of the opposition is in agreement about what the major political issues in the country are.

We, as the voters, are being presented with a huge opportunity in the next election, the possibility for change and, hopefully, improvement is coming if we are willing to use our votes to achieve that end.

It is our responsibility then to get informed about what the possible alternative options are and to choose wisely based on that knowledge. As the hour draws near it becomes more and more important that we engage with each other about the importance of voting and do so in a manner that is focused on what this country could be if it were governed well.

The only way to do this is to figure out who is actually capable of running a country in a way that benefits all its citizens. I hope that these podcasts can serve as a starting point for this.

Episode 01 - Vuyo Zungula, African Transformation Movement

With the proliferation of new parties over the past few years it is easy to forget how new some of the existing parties in parliament themselves are. The African Transformation Movement for one has only ever contested the 2019 national and local government elections. Their leader is one of its founding members, Vuyolwethu Zungula, who also happens to be the youngest party leader in parliament.

The party itself has values which are rooted in the Christian tradition but not limited to it and which it insists that its members and the broader public should abide by. These values include, but are not limited to, peace, ubuntu, servant leadership and accountability. Alongside these values, Vuyo insisted that the major focus on the ATM within parliament has been to try and use the parliament as a platform to forward solution-based discussions where they see fit.

After establishing the broader values that guide the ATM I thought it was necessary to address one of the biggest criticisms that often gets thrown at the ATM, that its creation was in part funded by Jacob Zuma and the Guptas. Vuyo’s response to this was to insist that the ATM is a party funded by small-scale donations from its members, that it has never received a cent of funding from either Jacob Zuma or the Guptas and that the story that it has was started by a hostile media.

He went on to say that as a small party they do not have the resources that the media has to publish their side of the story. It is up to the viewers to decide where they land on this, but this part of the conversation was secondary to the podcast, as it primarily revolved around what the ATM would do if given access to more legislative power.

So, what were some of the ATM’s more important policy positions? Our first focus was on the issue of crime. The ATM would like to see the police get paid better for their work, as well as the police force receiving more funding to increase their crime-fighting capacity.

Alongside this they want to reduce the amount of political appointments to leadership positions and a return of the death penalty for particularly violent crimes. A final and interesting point he made was that citizens need to be taught better the value of peace because he sees the lack of this value in civil society creating an environment that allows crime and criminality to flourish.

Linked to the issue of crime is the issue of unemployment, especially youth unemployment. The ATM’s primary policy plan to create jobs revolves around moving the South African economy away from being a consumer-based economy to a production-based economy.

He wants old, abandoned factories revamped and an aggressive focus on producing all types of goods here. He went on to say that the ATM would also look to break up the ‘oligopolies’ that dominate some of South Africa’s big industries citing cellular network providers, banks and construction companies as examples of this. They would like to see more competition in this sector, specifically from smaller businesses. Finally, he wants to see more being done to promote businesses in the informal sector as he claimed that most of the policy focus revolves around the formal sector of the economy.

The last policy plan I would like to highlight from our discussion was the topic of education policy. The ATM believes that the education system needs to produce more ‘job creators’ by providing learners with classes that teach entrepreneurial thinking and providing them with the skills needed to be of value in a modern economy.

He also wants to move away from the traditional, theoretical teaching in schools to a system that focuses on instilling problem-solving thinking in learners. Finally, the ATM wants to provide better funding to government schools to reduce the quality gap between the rich and poor schools in the country.

With regards to the question of potential coalitions, the ATM is willing to work with any party provided that they enter into a coalition agreement that aligns with the values of the party. To them, coalitions should be rooted in shared values and from those shared values a solution-based policy agenda can be built.

The final aspect of our conversation I want to touch on was our discussion about his scepticism as to whether the IEC can serve as a truly impartial body to safeguard our elections. The ATM has previously run into trouble with the IEC over the registration of the party, but his overarching point about the IEC was that he is unsure that a body that has ties to a corrupt government can be expected to not be prey to the self-same corruption that is systemic throughout the rest of the government.

He fears that we are putting too much trust in the impartiality of the body and that this trust may be misplaced. While this is a worrying thought in the run-up to the 2024 elections, it should serve, above all, as a message that what is needed is a strong, concerted effort to ensure that small tampering on the fringes will not have an impact on the final results of our next national election.