Over 100 hung councils, 14 days: A negotiator’s rulebook for coalitions that last

Following the local elections, there are more than 100 “hung councils” – a record number – in municipalities where no political party received an outright majority, where coalitions will have to be negotiated. 

This means that leaders must put egos aside and must understand that they ultimately negotiate to secure the best interests of the voters, not just their party voters, but all voters. One of the reasons many municipal elections have failed in the past is that party leaders often negotiate on the basis of securing patronage for themselves and their parties, rather than the widest public interests. The interests of the voters then often sadly become a passing interest only. 

The challenge for political parties where competing leaders have a deep personal dislike for one another, have traded insults prior to the elections and have vowed never to work together in a government, is how to now put these aside and negotiate the best coalition for often long-suffering voters. 

When negotiating a critical city coalition, the question is often whether to let the local party leaders negotiate or bring in national leaders. There is no right or wrong decision. When the personal animosity between the local leader or leaders is deemed to be too bitter for them to soberly negotiate a deal, parties may want to bring in national leaders or choose to appoint a neutral, independent outsider to negotiate the coalition. 

Alternatively, if parties have deep local depth, they could remove from the negotiations their local leader or leaders and use other local leaders, including retired leaders, to head their negotiating teams. 

The moonshot pact

The leaders of the 15-party multiparty charter coalition (MPC) or the “moonshot pact”, which included the Democratic Alliance, Inkatha Freedom Party, ActionSA, Freedom Front Plus and African Christian Democratic Party, approached me in 2023, as an independent chair of the negotiations, given the perceived personal animosities between some of the party leaders. 

In 2013, when Eswatini was gripped by deadly political violence, political leaders asked me, as a neutral outsider, to negotiate the political talks between absolute monarch King Mswati III, his political allies and opposition groups. The leaders believed an outsider, accepted by all groups, would be best suited to facilitate the political talks. 

Clear standpoints

As they begin negotiations, political parties must decide up front who they absolutely would not partner with in a coalition. However, there have to be clear criteria for why a party would not partner in a coalition with another party. It cannot, for example, be based on one leader personally disliking his or her counterpart.

A party must also decide up front the circumstances under which it would go into opposition. The conditions under which a party decides not to go into a coalition with other parties should include the other party opposing the country’s Constitution, advocating violence or racial hatred; or if the opposite party is obviously corrupt, criminal or ideologically extremist. 

It is often better, while waiting for final results, to start “talks about talks”, informally exploring with key leaders in parties that will potentially be part of a coalition. 

When parties agree to formally negotiate, they will have to set basic terms of engagement to guide how they will conduct themselves – with respect for others, civility, decorum and discretion. 

Core common policies

Parties in coalition negotiations must agree on core common policies – it is easier to do so at the municipal level. All parties in coalition negotiations must understand that each party comes to the negotiation with core policies, and will have to take some “victory” policies back to their constituencies, but they all have to agree on a set of common coalition platform policies.

Allocating positions will always be important. The mayor, speaker, finance, infrastructure-related portfolios and municipal public accounts committees (MPACs) are the most important portfolios in a municipality.  It is preferable that the largest party appoint the mayor, and that parties thereafter allocate positions based on the party strengths and the competence of the party representatives. Not all parties in the coalition need to have formal government positions.  

Coalition agreements must agree on breaches of principle over which a partner would leave the coalition. Coalitions must have a conflict resolution structure. It could, for example, be chaired by the smallest party in the coalition, but never by the largest party or the large parties. Or, the parties can agree to bring an independent individual to deal with coalition conflicts.

The conflict resolution structure, the “clearing-house” of South Africa’s Government of National Unity, was doomed to fail from the start, because it is headed by Paul Mashatile, the ANC and South African Deputy President, who comes from the largest party in the GNU. Appointing someone from the smallest party or an independent neutral individual would have made the GNU’s conflict resolution structure more credible. 

Coalitions fail at the local level because the parties with the most votes insist on making their party policies the coalition policies, rather than agreeing on a core common coalition policy platform. 

In many coalition negotiations, parties often negotiate for positions, and municipal coalition negotiations become negotiations for positions, rather than for a local coalition government. In a coalition, not all parties should necessarily be given formal municipal positions, yet they would still be part of the coalition government. 

A coalition super-party

A coalition government must be looked at as almost a new party, a super-party, made up of the coalition partners, for the duration of the five-year coalition term.

It is important that the coalition government also runs a parallel political structure which brings together a second layer of party political leaders, who could meet regularly to iron out any problems or potential problems. But the leaders of the coalition partners must also have standing meetings to discuss issues.

When I chaired the multiparty charter (MPC) negotiations, we organised regular, parallel meetings of the party general secretaries or senior leaders, who are not part of the main negotiations, to work through issues that could be resolved at that level, which meant the main negotiations could focus on the main conflicts or challenges. 

Public accountability

Coalition agreements must be made public. This helps with holding the participants in the coalition publicly accountable to their supporters and voters. When coalition agreements are not made public, it is very difficult for citizens to hold these parties accountable. Worse, unserious parties can leave for superficial reasons, with no consequences. 

The more political parties in a coalition, the harder it is to govern the coalition, make decisions and agree on policies. It is preferable to have coalitions with a smaller number of parties, if possible. 

I think it is important that, after a coalition agreement is reached, it is signed publicly. Such rituals are important mechanisms of accountability. After the MPC partners came to a coalition agreement, I insisted on a public signing ceremony of the agreement, in front of the media.  

14 days

There are only 14 days to negotiate a municipal coalition. Of course, in many developed democracies, such as the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium, political parties can negotiate for up to six months to form a national government, without service delivery collapsing. In these developed democracies, political party leaders appear relatively more mature, but importantly, the public services there are more professionalised, not politicised as in South Africa, and carry on normally with their duties, without a government. 

The ANC has a cadre deployment policy, which parachutes its cadres into key positions in the public service. Individuals are not appointed on merit and are therefore accountable not to the Constitution, nor to their professional ethos, but to the ANC as a party. In the long term, to ensure stable coalition governance, South Africa’s public service has to be urgently professionalised. 

Having a restricted deadline for coalition negotiations is not necessarily bad. A restricted deadline does focus the minds of coalition parties to forge a deal quickly. During the negotiations for a democratic South Africa (Codesa), once the leading parties agreed on a deadline, 27 April 1994, for the first democratic elections, it brought renewed urgency, and the negotiations accelerated to a conclusion.

When Lord Mountbatten was appointed to shepherd the negotiations for Indian independence from the United Kingdom, he quickly set a short deadline, of around 10 months, for political negotiations to be concluded, to transfer and partition. At the time, this alarmed political parties, but it did focus their minds on concluding the independence negotiations. 

Coalition Bill delay

The proposed Municipal Structures Amendment Bill, or “coalition Bill”, proposes to extend the negotiation time to 30 days. The Bill was supposed to have been adopted by Parliament before the 4 November 2026 elections, to enable order, better governance and more stable coalitions.

The Bill has not been finalised. Many political parties disagree with aspects of it, and there has also not been sufficient public participation to secure critical input from ordinary citizens, civil society and extra-parliamentary parties. 

I was involved in the early drafts of the coalition Bill, when I was asked to be co-chair of the South African Local Government Association and the National Council of Provinces deliberations in 2024 on a new coalition governance framework for all spheres of South African government.

It is critical that the Bill is finalised ahead of the 2029 national and provincial elections, when we are likely to have another national coalition, and many more provincial coalitions. DM

Before the 2024 general elections, Prof Gumede was co-chair of the South African Local Government Association’s deliberations on developing the draft coalition law for all spheres of government in South Africa. The recommendations informed Parliament’s current draft coalition legal framework.