DA leader John Steenhuisen. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
Talks among opposition parties about the proposed “moonshot pact” are bogged down over whether parties such as the Patriotic Alliance, which are in local government coalitions with the ANC, should be invited to join the 2024 elections strategy.
Leaders of parties including the Democratic Alliance, the Inkatha Freedom Party, the Freedom Front Plus, ActionSA and Build One South Africa met for the fourth time last week and agreed to extend invitations to other parties to join the pact.
The moonshot pact was first mooted by DA leader John Steenhuisen after his re-election as party leader in April, but the process got off to a slow start over issues including which parties should participate and be represented.
The pact aims to create a coalition of minority parties with a combined majority large enough to replace the ANC — or a potential ANC-Economic Freedom Fighters coalition — after next year’s poll.
Last Thursday’s meeting apparently agreed to invite the Abantu Batho Congress, which helped the ANC to retain control of eThekwini in 2021 despite losing its majority, to participate in the next weekly meeting.
But the parties could not reach agreement on the involvement of the Patriotic Alliance, which is in a number of local government coalitions with the ANC and the Economic Freedom Fighters, including in Johannesburg.
This is believed to have happened despite the majority of parties agreeing that they needed to broaden the coalition to muster the numbers necessary to unseat the ANC in the coming national and provincial elections.
In an interview published on the DA website on Monday, Steenhuisen said a collective majority by parties, excluding the ANC and Economic Freedom Fighters, was “achievable with great effort and determination”.
Steenhuisen said that seven parties had come on board thus far and that several others were still consulting.
The pact itself would be negotiated at a national convention in June.
“At this historic convention, we will negotiate our offer to South Africa. This will include our vision and shared governing principles, as well as a programme of action to get South Africa going again,” he wrote.
Steenhuisen said although the specifics still had to be negotiated, the agreement would “put South Africa first” by focusing on service delivery, economic and constitutional development, fighting corruption and ending load-shedding.
ActionSA national chairperson Michael Beaumont said the process “seems to be locked around which parties must be invited” but that another meeting would be held on Thursday to discuss the matter.
There was disagreement on inviting “a handful of parties”, mainly because of the position adopted by the DA.
“Most of the parties hold the view that those parties should be invited. The DA persists with the notion that we should be more selective in which parties are to join,” Beaumont said.
“From the ActionSA standpoint, the process needs to have a majority if it is to have any credibility. South Africans want an actual alternative to the ANC,” he said.
Polls last year predicted that the ANC would take less than 50% of the vote next year and would require the cooperation of the Economic Freedom Fighters to retain power.
But the most recent poll by market research company Ipsos in April has predicted that although the ANC had fallen to 45% in terms of support, the party was likely to retain almost 50% of the vote in May. This would mean that any opposition coalition would require the participation of the Economic Freedom Fighters to govern, even in the provinces where the ANC’s support was lower than it was nationally.
The vote of no confidence in Johannesburg mayor Kabelo Gwamanda next week will be an interesting test of the ability of the coalition partners to carry the motion, brought by ActionSA over allegations of fraudulent conduct against him.
Gwamanda, an Al Jamah-ah councillor, was elected in May to replace Thapelo Amad, with the backing of the Economic Freedom Fighters, the ANC and the Patriotic Alliance, after ActionSA fielded Funzi Ngobeni as a mayoral candidate and the DA fielded its candidate Mpho Phalatse.
Talks between the DA leadership in KwaZulu-Natal and their Inkatha Freedom Party counterparts are continuing regarding a service delivery agreement in the seven municipalities they co-govern.
The DA and Inkatha Freedom Party have developed an effective working relationship in recent by-elections, taking wards in a number of municipalities by pooling their forces behind a single candidate, depending on which of them was the stronger in each case.
Inkatha Freedom Party provincial chairperson Thami Ntuli said that the cooperation agreement had thus far focused on the municipalities where they co-governed with the DA and that this was “where the centre of the relationship is”.
Recently, sources in several opposition parties told the Mail & Guardian that lobbyists acting on behalf of donors had been offering parties a share in a R500 million fund to parties willing to back the moonshot pact.
According to the sources, who have asked not to be named, the donors, including long-term DA funder Martin Moshal, now also a regular donor to ActionSA, want the splintered opposition to form a united front going into the 2024 elections.
But the DA and ActionSA have denied the existence of a R500 million fund to assist parties who buy into the moonshot pact. They also deny that any of their funders would place preconditions of participation on the donations they made.
