Africa-Press – South-Africa. EFF leader Julius Malema believes the turmoil in coalition arrangements in the country is the fault of the ANC and DA’s unwillingness to share power.
He said the ideal political outcome for the country was for no political party to receive an outright majority, and for parties to govern through coalitions.
“Coalitions are the best thing, and we deserve that. Where no one has an absolute majority, and we all govern through consensus. Too much power corrupts, and that is what we have experienced since 1994,” he said.
Malema was speaking on Friday at an EFF diplomatic event held in Pretoria as part of the party’s 10th anniversary celebrations. He said coalitions were new to the country, and so far, had provided for interesting political outcomes, but not the destruction of hung municipalities.
He added that the main problem faced by coalition arrangements signed after the 2021 municipal elections was that the ANC and the DA did not see smaller political parties as equal to them.
The EFF leader said the ANC was still under the delusion that it was in charge. Meanwhile, the DA was preoccupied with being the party to hold the most positions in coalition arrangements.
“We have succeeded with coalitions so far. No municipality has completely collapsed to the point of having to be resuscitated by an upper government. The problem in this country is not coalitions, but the ANC and the DA.,” he said.
“They are so used to power, and when they are out of power and in a coalition, they still want to behave like they are in power. Coalition means power sharing, and you must let go and not behave like you have power when you don’t have power. You must share.
“We are the best coalition partner because we have never been in power and don’t know it. But those who are used to power, when it shifts, are in denial that they still have power, which leads to the problems we have seen in terms of coalitions.
“The ANC has been in power for too long, and when it gets removed and is in a coalition, it is in denial.”
The EFF forms part of a power-sharing deal with the ANC, which governs Ekurhuleni, Johannesburg and a few other municipalities in Gauteng.
This coalition arrangement has seen the most resistance in Ekurhuleni, where ANC councillors have resisted, without much success, the arrangement with the EFF.
The ANC/EFF alliance has, in recent months, seen ANC members offer conflicting views on its benefits.
In his address, Malema added that the ideal political solution for removing the ANC would be for opposition political parties to unite under one umbrella.
This option currently does not seem plausible as the DA does not want to co-govern with the EFF, a party with enough electoral support to strengthen the opposition bloc against the ANC.
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