OPINION| Marriages Of Inconvenience: The Fraught Politics Of Coalitions In South Africa

KEITH GOTTSCHALK

THE popularity of the African National Congress (ANC), which has governed South Africa since the end of apartheid in 1994, has slipped in successive elections from its high of over 60%. First it declined to under 60% , then to below 50% in the cities of Tshwane, Johannesburg, and Nelson Mandela Bay in 2016.

Nonetheless, the Democratic Alliance (DA), the official opposition, shows no sign of benefiting from the ANC’s slack – hardly reaching even 30% of the votes cast. Instead, the ANC’s numbers have been absorbed by small, mostly new parties.

Inevitably, South Africa is in for many decades of coalitions. This is the central theme of a new book, Marriages of Inconvenience: The Politics of Coalitions in South Africa, which takes a forward-looking view of the country politics but also a historical one.

Political scientist Susan Booysen and the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection, the