PHUTI MOSOMANE
DEPUTY President Paul Mashatile announced during a session in the National Assembly on Thursday that the Presidency will be convening a national dialogue on coalition governments.
The dialogue is scheduled to take place within the next two months.
“Working with the Minister of COGTA we will be inviting all political parties represented in parliament to the dialogue on the principles of coalition governments across all spheres of government while we are urgently attending to the issue of dysfunctional municipalities as a result of the current loosely arranged coalition governments,” said Mashatile.
Mashatile further emphasized that all political parties would be invited to contribute their inputs and views to a technical committee established by the Presidency and the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA).
This committee will be responsible for developing a comprehensive framework for coalition governments in South Africa.
“We want to build consensus because if we don’t work together as political parties, we will fail our people, and our economy will collapse,” he said.
He urged political parties to unite in order to develop a framework for coalition governments.
Over the last few months, he said the National government has been working ways of ensuring stability of coalition governments.
“Section 154 of the Constitution enjoins us to support and strengthen the capacity of municipalities to manage their own affairs, to exercise their powers and to perform their functions,” he added.
Through the Inter-Ministerial Committee, his office is supporting Municipalities to accelerate service delivery.
The IMC also serves as a catalyst to build financially resilient and stable Municipalities by among others focussing on identify service delivery hotspots for in interventions.
As part of the interventions is to ensure alignment of plans, including infrastructure development plans and operations with national, provincial and district in line with the District Development Model.
The matter of coalition governments is important and requires urgent attention and collective wisdom.
As a results, Mashatile told MPs that there is a need to convene a national dialogue on coalitions, and more specifically on reasons why municipalities are dysfunctional due to the absence of a regulatory framework guiding coalitions.
The DA has introduced the Private Member’s Bill on coalition governments in Parliament.
Post 2021 local government elections, SALGA develop a framework for coalition governments.
“We did observe in our previous response that the existing framework has weaknesses, and as a result, we committed to convene a dialogue to discuss and develop a coherent coalition framework,” he said.
Going into the dialogue, he said there must be agreement on few principles for a coalition between and with any political party in South Africa.
In his view, the following should be the guiding principles;
“Firstly, putting the people first by making them the tenants of our value system, in the formation of governments.
In the spirit of Batho Pele, the measurement of the performance of coalitions must be about what we have done to improve the lives of the people for the better.
Second, coalition governments must be committed to combating poverty and deprivation as well as building a growing and inclusive economy and must report regularly, by providing evidence on poverty reduction, growing the economy, and including the majority in the mainstream economy.
Third, coalition governments must contribute toward building a prosperous society in which people have access to land for productive purposes and are meaningfully participating in the economy.
Fourth, coalition governments must be committed to building a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic, united and prosperous society.
Fifth, a coalition government should be bound together by a commitment to Good Governance, with no tolerance for corruption.
Sixth, the party that has won the largest votes should be allowed to lead the coalition and the executive positions should be allocated proportional to the votes obtained by the coalition partners.”
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