One of the most memorable moments of the last elections saw Cope leader Mosiuoa Lekota eat a hat.

In a pre-election interview, Lekota had rashly promised to “eat his hat” if Cope received fewer votes in the 2014 ballot than it had five years previously.

Local journalists displayed an admirable commitment to holding politicians to account when Lekota was duly handed a hat to eat, complete with tomato sauce after the 2014 vote count revealed that Cope had won well over a million votes fewer than the party had managed in 2009.

In 2009, the party clinched 1,311,027 votes in its first outing as a breakaway faction of the ANC. By 2014, its fortunes had dramatically slumped: collapsing to just 123,235 votes, which reduced the party’s Parliamentary seats from 30 to three.

This time around, Lekota has yet to make any hat-related predictions about Cope’s performance in the upcoming general elections.

At the party’s national congress in Bloemfontein last weekend, however, the talk was of reinvigoration and renewal — though the leadership team of Lekota and his deputy Willie Madisha remains unchanged.

In comments made by Lekota to the Congress, it appeared that Cope will attempt to harness the ongoing revelations of the Zondo Commission to win back voters initially drawn to the party in 2008 after Lekota left the ANC in protest over the axing of former president Thabo Mbeki.

“We were right and our opponents were wrong,” Lekota stated flatly.

“History will continue to absolve Cope from the destruction of state institutions and the betrayal of the 1994 promise of economic justice, democracy, reconciliation and nation building. We were right to warn in 2008 that our country was being taken in the wrong direction.”

In a country with a short collective memory, however, an appeal to voters to recall the circumstances of a decade ago may not be enough to win Cope the “stronger voice in Parliament and legislatures” that Lekota hopes for.

But for a party with just three MPs in Parliament, Cope has done a good job at maintaining an audible voice on the national scene over the past five years — particularly when compared with, for instance, the African Independent Congress (AIC), which won the same number of seats in 2009.

A victory claimed by Cope in December 2018 was the adoption of the Civil Union Amendment Bill, a Cope-initiated bill which prohibits same-sex couples from being turned away from Home Affairs departments when trying to marry. It was only the second bill initiated by an individual MP adopted in South Africa’s National Assembly.

In 2018 Lekota also received a great deal of attention for his vocal opposition to the expropriation of land without compensation, which he tearfully termed a betrayal of what he and other freedom fighters had struggled for.

Cope’s stated commitment to non-racialism has led the party towards some unexpected bedfellows in recent months. Lekota has waxed lyrical about Afrikaner lobby group AfriForum, and in December accompanied controversial singer Steve Hofmeyr to court to lay charges against Black First Land First (BLF) leader Andile Mngxitama for racist incitement.

In his statement to the Cope congress, Lekota called on “those voters who have otherwise lost confidence in the party political system and are thus not participating in elections to give Cope their vote”.

But a commitment to non-racialism and a vow to uphold the Constitution is hardly enough to set the party apart in South Africa’s cluttered political landscape.

As proof that Cope is truly invested in the idea of reforming the political system, Lekota pointed to the amendments that the party is proposing to the Electoral Act. The amendments would allow people to stand for election as individuals, rather than representatives of political parties.

They would also allow public representatives such as the president, premiers and mayors to be “directly elected by the people and not through the corrupted party system”, Lekota said.

Just one problem: as far as unique selling points go, it’s not totally unique.

Taking questions at the Cape Town Press Club last week, DA leader Mmusi Maimane promised similar electoral reforms under a DA government.

And Patricia de Lille’s new GOOD party is also promising to bring “government and elected representatives closer to the communities they serve”, by devolving power from national and provincial governments to local governments which are “directly accountable to those communities”.

De Lille unveiled further details about her party on Sunday, following a policy conference “attended by nearly 100 delegates from across the country”.

She announced the establishment of a 36-member interim national leadership committee, which De Lille heads. As expected, former DA City of Cape Town representatives Brett Heron and Shaun August — who resigned in protest at De Lille’s treatment by the DA — are among the national leaders.

Although De Lille’s constituency is assumed to be largely Western Cape-based, the former mayor of Cape Town has stressed her new party’s national aspirations. GOOD will establish coordinating committees in all nine provinces, she said on Sunday.

The party has yet to release a detailed policy document, but De Lille sketched some of its policy positions, ranging from quite specific — worker representation on company boards — to more vague:

“Put criminals in jail and not in Parliament.”

De Lille also stressed the need for transparency about political party funding. When asked by journalists if she would disclose the funders of GOOD, however, she demurred — asking:

“What purpose will it serve it we release our information and no one else does it?”

GOOD joins Cope, the DA, the Freedom Front Plus and other parties in opposition to amending the Constitution to allow expropriation without compensation, suggesting that De Lille’s new political trajectory may not be as distinct from her old party as some of her supporters may hope.

As things stand, the two aspects of GOOD truly setting it apart from other parties at present are its chosen colour of orange — a hue unpopular for political party logos in democratic South Africa — and its insistence on relentlessly milking references to “good”.

“GOOD is the only party that believes in the inherent Goodness of all South Africans,” states its website, while De Lille signed herself in a recent letter to the newspaper as “Leader for good”.

But how many good people are there in South Africa really? Party spokesperson Cameron Arendse told Daily Maverick that “currently around 67,000 people have signed up as supporters and volunteers”.

Not bad for a foetus of a political party — but still only around half the number that drove Lekota to munch on a hat after the last elections. DM