Tag: south-africa

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The limitations of Gamson’s Law

ANTHONY BUTLER: Weighing the DA’s slice of the unity government

Some party members are unhappy with GNU balance of power, but a closer breakdown is warranted

First published in Business Day

26 JULY 2024

ANTHONY BUTLER

We all know ANC activists who have noisily condemned the government of national unity (GNU). But DA supporters have more quietly, but equally vehemently, expressed discontent with the grand coalition.

Such scepticism is nothing new. A July 2022 Social Research Foundation poll suggested that two-thirds of ANC voters would “compromise party values … for the sake of creating a stable coalition”. Only four out of 10 DA voters were happy to do so.

Making matters worse is a perception that the ANC has benefited most from the deal. The key evidence presented by DA critics is a lack of proportionality in the allocation of meaningful ministerial positions.

American social scientist William Gamson first suggested in 1961 that parties making coalition deals expect the “payoff” from the deal to be proportional to the “resources” they bring to it. A decade later, European political scientists recast this insight as “Gamson’s Law”: the key resource parties possess — the proportion of seats they hold in the legislature — will closely match the share of ministerial portfolios they secure.

There have not been many laws in political science, and the few that have emerged have eventually turned out to be wrong. It was therefore a happy surprise for proponents of Gamson’s Law that numerous empirical studies of coalition formation, in the years that followed, confirmed that parties reliably secured ministerial positions in proportion to the legislative seats they held.

The absence of this relationship in SA has been a key basis for DA member discontent. The parties in the GNU together hold 287 seats out of the total 400 in the national assembly. The new government includes 34 cabinet ministers and 38 deputy ministers.

The ANC secured 159 seats in the National Assembly, and this translated to 22 cabinet positions and 31 deputy ministerial positions. In percentage terms, 55% of GNU seats led to 65% of cabinet positions and 82% of deputy ministerial positions.

The DA secured 87 seats in parliament but was allocated only six cabinet posts and five deputy ministerial positions. A total of 30% of GNU seats brought just 18% of cabinet portfolios and 13% of deputy ministerial positions. Adding insult to injury, many DA activists believe the party has been deprived of the most powerful and prestigious portfolios, notably in foreign affairs and the economy cluster.

However, there are four considerations DA activists should bear in mind before they condemn their negotiating team. The first is that Gamson’s Law derives from the experiences of parliamentary systems in Western Europe. A landmark study published earlier in 2024 in European Political Science Review demonstrated that it “does not travel especially well” across constitutional types or parts of the world.

Second, the biggest cause of disproportion is deputy ministerial portfolios that are mostly packed with ANC hacks, but these ministers have strictly limited powers. And third, “payoff” must be understood negatively as well as positively. The DA has steered clear of “no-win” departments and “ministerial graveyards”. It has also minimised its exposure to potential coalition collapse by deploying mostly inconsequential leaders to the executive. Four of the six DA cabinet ministers — Siviwe Gwarube, Solly Malatsi, Leon Schreiber and Dean Macpherson — are political toddlers in their 30s.

Finally, payoff isn’t just about bums on seats round the cabinet table. Long-standing demands from the DA and the IFP for devolution of powers to provinces and metropolitan authorities are likely to materialise across several sectors. The broad principle of “sufficient consensus” set out in the GNU’s founding statement of intent meanwhile places an effective policy veto in DA hands.

Sceptical activists doubtless need persuading about the merits of the coalition deal. However, the payoffs from the GNU are not so unbalanced so as to bring any early DA rebellion against it.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

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Thinking long term about coalition government

ANTHONY BUTLER: GNU parties should beware myopic short-term pact

Coalition partners will need to stick together and learn from one another

12 JULY 2024 – 05:00

First published in Business Day

by ANTHONY BUTLER

As post-election euphoria subsides, the underlying character and longer-term prospects of the GNU are attracting interest. Is the current coalition government here to stay?

The answer may simply be that this is up to the bigger parties involved. At the core of GNU it remains a coalition between the ANC and DA, with the IFP — and other small party participants — that make the whole enterprise regionally and racially credible.

The bigger parties may decide to treat the coalition instrumentally, as a mechanism to protect their vote shares, enhance their public profiles and secure public office for their leaders in the short term.

As the 2026 local government elections approach, party leaders may choose to minimise the immediate electoral costs of the elite pact they have struck, deploy divisive public relations strategies that belittle coalition partners, and focus on boosting their individual vote shares.

After all, the default position of political parties, especially larger ones, is to stay the same. Large organisations find change painful because foundational values infuse everything they do, party elites are tied into intricate regional and ideological power balances, and links to key constituencies and donors have made the party what it is.

Party success and endurance has often relied on an ability to channel resources such as jobs and public services to particular constituencies, or on a dogmatic assertion of anachronistic ideological nostrums.

Political parties sadly resemble football clubs — with managers, players, funders and fans symbolically fused into a happy mob — rather more closely than they resemble repositories of wisdom and the rational calculation of interests.

While a short-term pact between football teams is the easiest way forward for the GNU parties, such an approach would be shortsighted. The idea of sufficient consensus between the ANC and the DA that underpins the current coalition will not survive very long. By providing an effective veto to the DA, it will antagonise smaller parties as conflicts over policy choices escalate.

The major opposition parties that remain outside the charmed circle, notably the MK party and the EFF, already account for a quarter of seats in the National Assembly. Once they learn how to work together and fuse their electoral offerings they will pose a growing challenge.

To fight off this anti-constitutionalist menace, parties in the GNU should stick together — but also to change. With all due deference to party leaders’ sensitive feelings, this process must start with a recognition of failure. Fewer than one in three of the eligible voting age population actually turned out for the two parties — ANC and DA together — at end-May.

The ANC has become addicted to patronage as a tool of political management, even as the power brokers it creates have generated insurgent factions that now threaten to destroy it.

The DA remains in deep denial about its image as a white-centred party, attributing this representation to an antagonistic media, confused citizens and the alleged bitterness of former black party leaders who have left.

Coalition government institutions, properly designed, can help struggling leaders face up to their deficiencies and begin to overcome them. As long-term partners the ANC and IFP can help the DA reconsider how it looks to those who do not trust it. The DA and the IFP can meanwhile assist the ANC to overcome its enduring legacy of struggle accounting.

It would be sad if the GNU was just a short-term stopgap. If it is to be more than that, the parties involved need to adopt attitudes — and create institutional mechanisms — that allow them to learn from, as well as advise, one another.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

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A period of minority government might still be needed

ANTHONY BUTLER: Brinkmanship over cabinet posts shows GNU is not yet government

Pact provides shared framework for parties to interact constructively and for citizens to adapt to unfamiliar terrain

First published in Business Day

28 JUNE 2024

In the face of last-minute brinkmanship over cabinet posts we have been reminded once again that the government of national unity (GNU) is not yet a government at all.

A GNU is rather a useful idea, one that exists only because a particular group of people have decided it does. It provides a shared framework for parties to interact constructively with each other and for citizens to adapt to an unfamiliar political terrain.

The GNU’s foundational “statement of intent” included an agreement that its composition “shall be discussed and agreed among the existing parties, whenever new parties desire to be part of the GNU”. This basic commitment was not respected, which provided an early reminder that the statement is not binding. It is clear that a GNU can quickly disappear in a puff of smoke.

The idea of a GNU has been most attractive to the bigger parties involved. The ANC doesn’t have to admit it lost; instead it has been “sent a message” to work with others. The DA can participate in national government despite a stagnant support base. And the IFP can govern a province without actually having to win it.

On matters of process, the GNU commits to the magical logic of “sufficient consensus”, which arises when “parties to the GNU representing 60% of seats in the National Assembly agree”. This means the ANC and DA both have an effective veto — a huge ANC concession — so long, of course, as the statement of intent is respected, and the parties can agree precisely which kinds of decisions require cross-party consensus.

If the sharing out of ministerial portfolios gets back on track, the far harder part — reaching detailed agreement on policy — still lies ahead. Once a cabinet is sworn in there will be a policy lekgotla, followed by “an all-inclusive national dialogue” in which parties, civil society, labour and business will supposedly forge “a national social compact”. Such road-signs point towards the all-too-familiar national policy quagmire.

Moreover, the smaller parties remain a problem, adding needless complexity and mostly being distinguished by the personalities of their leaders rather than by any potential contribution they might make. Complexity can undermine coalition stability, but these parties also provide the essential “national unity” fig leaf any viable coalition now needs.

The good news is that the resource-seeking and grievance-based parties are on the outside. There has been an early commitment to defend constitutionalism, the current governance framework and institutional innovations such as Operation Vulindlela. Real policy overlap exists between the broad reform factions of the ANC, DA and IFP.

If the DA temporarily withdraws from the GNU negotiations, the basic arithmetic will not change. The ANC will be back where it began: with an unpalatable — hopefully impossible — choice between the EFF and MK. President Cyril Ramaphosa will probably be forced to form a minority government, and economic turbulence and party donor pressures will redouble.

Meanwhile, the tortuous negotiations have helped many voters to work through their confusion and pain. While there is little evidence to support the famous theory that there are five stages of grief, there has been a lot of denial and anger, and accusations and betrayal, on display.

Parties desperate to avoid alienation of their supporters, and possible desertion of their activists, have been bought time by the GNU. Weeks of negotiation have allowed party foot soldiers and shocked citizens to progress far towards acceptance that we live in a new political world.

Some of them, sadly, may need longer. But amid a national crisis the country cannot afford a prolonged stalemate.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

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The DA’s real challenge isn’t ANC lies

ANTHONY BUTLER: Politicians tell lies, water is a bit wet and other truths

John Steenhuisen’s damning evidence will unsettle only the few who still say Ramaphosa saintly and the ANC godly

First published in Business Day

19 APRIL 2024

DA leader John Steenhuisen astonished Western Cape residents this week when he revealed that some politicians tell lies.

So troubled is the leader of the official opposition about his discovery that he has decided to file a complaint with the public protector about the abuse of public resources in the service of such dishonesty.

The target of his ire is the ANC and its leader, President Cyril Ramaphosa. Steenhuisen describes the ANC as “the most dishonest manipulators our democracy has ever seen”, saying that for 30 years they have “scammed South Africans with promises they never intended to keep”.

To be fair to the DA leader, he presents a pretty strong case. The ANC promises us free education, but “Blade Nzimande’s cadres in the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) have looted all the money”. The governing party stopped load-shedding in the run-up to the election, but everyone knows it will come back far worse afterwards. Ramaphosa promises to fight corruption, but he “chaired the ANC cadre deployment committee when state capture happened”.

Worst of all, Steenhuisen says the ANC is planning to appoint EFF deputy leader Floyd Shivambu as finance minister. “If we allow the ANC to pull off this latest manipulation, you will end up with the same person who helped loot VBS Mutual Bank as your finance minister … Your property will be expropriated without compensation, your pension will be looted, your savings will evaporate and inflation will plunge you into starvation.”

However well substantiated, Steenhuisen’s position is unpersuasive in certain respects. First, the ANC has evidently tried to accomplish quite a lot, if the 2022 census results presented to us by Stats SA are to be believed. We now have near-universal access to basic education, for instance. About 80% of households have piped water, and 90% electricity, up from 58% in 2011. And almost 90% of households are in formal dwellings, up from 65% in 1996.

These are indications of the ANC’s intention to make good on its promises. The problem is that it isn’t so good at follow through. Children may attend school, but they don’t learn much. Water often doesn’t come out of all the new taps provided, electricity keeps going off (up until a few weeks ago), and the houses it builds are often in the wrong places.

The line between optimism and false promises is hard to draw, even for the DA. Will the DA really “end load-shedding and water-shedding, halve the rate of violent crime [and] crush corruption”, as Steenhuisen promises? Will it really “lift 6-million people out of poverty … triple the number of grade 4 learners who can read for meaning, and ensure quality healthcare for all, regardless of economic status”?

Citizens may question the promised complaint to the public protector. It is true that Kholeka Gcaleka previously worked as a legal adviser to former home affairs and finance minister Malusi Gigaba, when the minister was fighting malfeasance through an innovative public-private partnership with the Gupta family. While this undoubtedly makes Gcaleka an expert in matters of lying and dishonesty, the DA has said repeatedly that she is unfit to hold office. This throws the sincerity of the referral into question.

Finally, Steenhuisen’s damning evidence will unsettle only the small number of South Africans who continue to believe Ramaphosa is a saintly man and the ANC a godly institution. We know from opinion survey research that this now constitutes a small, shrinking part of the electorate.

However, citizens mostly do not believe any opposition party will do a better job than the ANC. This is why instead of switching their votes to alternative parties, they have been exiting the electoral process altogether.

It is here that the DA’s real challenge lies.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

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The ANC and the churches

ANTHONY BUTLER: The ANC has the edge in changing spiritual landscape

African independent churches, evangelical bodies and ‘prosperity churches’ are now centre of faith

First published in Business Day and BusinessLive

05 APRIL 2024

The Easter weekend offered a useful reminder that SA society is changing in ways that might leave some of our political parties behind. 

This remains a predominantly Christian society. The 2022 census suggested that a full 85% of South Africans consider themselves Christian, with fewer than one in 10 describing their beliefs as “traditional African”. No other religion reaches even 2%. 

Of course, Christianity played a major role in both white Afrikaner politics and the formation and evolution of the ANC. The Dutch Reformed Church was famously described as the National Party at prayer.

The ANC’s founders were primarily converts to the optimistic Protestant faiths taught in mission schools. Anglicanism and Methodism encouraged temperance, and the celebration of commerce and good works, as an avenue for civilisation.

Local variants of liberation theology that emerged in the late 1960s helped shape the black consciousness ideology that mobilised the youth in the 1970s — including our president, Cyril Ramaphosa. In the 1980s and early 1990s many churches played a central role in the United Democratic Front — though of course many did not. 

After 1994, under the leadership of the secret Methodist Nelson Mandela and his successor, Thabo Mbeki, the ANC tried to remake SA as a modern and secular country. However, such leaders and their churches were becoming increasingly unrepresentative of Christianity in the wider society.

Today about 5% of Christians are Methodists, and a similar number are Anglicans or Reformed Church members. They are dwarfed by enormous African independent churches and fast-growing Pentecostal and evangelical bodies. 

For independent churches, political affairs are a distraction from the demands of spiritual health. Change comes about not by means of good works but with the return of the Kingdom of God, after the existing social order has been destroyed by Armageddon. 

Many fast-expanding churches are “prosperity churches”, which assert that God grants material prosperity to believers who have enough faith. They foster an entrepreneurial attitude, generous tithing and life improvement strategies.

In now predominant churches, economic problems are blamed on the work of the devil rather than on government incompetence. Unemployment and stagnation are attributed to the collective sin of the nation rather than to ANC policy failure or corruption. 

Pastors encourage congregations to pray for leaders to mend their ways, rather than agitating for their removal. They also argue that Christians — or people who say they are Christians — should be in positions of leadership in the country to promote moral regeneration. 

The ANC has adapted to this changing spiritual landscape far better than most opposition parties. Jacob Zuma tapped into the currents early and adroitly, becoming pastor of the Full Gospel Church, the eThekwini Community Church and the Miracles Gospel Church in advance of the Polokwane conference that brought him to power. 

Zuma’s ANC established a pattern in which ANC leaders use the Easter weekend on election years to visit the full range of denominations. Last weekend, for example, Ramaphosa attended a Free State church and a Methodist service in Eastern Cape, and joined EFF president Julius Malema at the annual Easter pilgrimage to St Engenas Zion Christian Church in Moria. 

ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula noted this past weekend that ANC leaders were “not pure”. Their souls needed to be enriched because “they too can make mistakes … That is why we place the church at the centre of the work that we do.”

While this may not amount to a winning strategy, it is likely to reduce the scale of the ANC’s electoral decline. 

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

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Generalissimo Lesufi

ANTHONY BUTLER: AmaWinde just not the same as amaPanyaza

Gauteng premier looks much more presidential and ready for a military green bean coup

 First published in Business Day

23 FEBRUARY 2024

A lot of unfair criticism has been levelled at Panyaza Lesufi this week. On Monday the visionary Gauteng premier delivered a majestic state of the province address, radiating the quiet authority one associates with a president.

However, his detractors complain that his promises of new housing, private hospitals and job creation are unrealistic. Some even liken him to the inmate of a psychological facility, who suffers from the delusion that he has just seized power through a military coup.

This latter complaint derives in part from the presence at the venue of 7,000 “crime prevention wardens” — popularly known as amaPanyaza — resplendent in quasi-military green uniforms and dubbed “military veterans” by the caudillo. Counter-revolutionary forces may have robbed these recruits of automatic rifles, but Lesufi can now provide them with air support from “the Gauteng Air Wing unit”.

While this policing model reminds some critics of the Ciskei Defence Force of the 1980s, there is merit to Lesufi’s proposals. After all, there are high levels of violent and property crime in Gauteng — only some of it committed by ANC politicians — and the national police service has failed to curtail it.

Lesufi came under fire from EFF Gauteng deputy chairperson Phillip Makwala, who memorably described the wardens as “green beans”. But EFF commissars in red uniforms and berets can scarcely complain about the militarisation of society.

Criticism from the DA is also hard to take, not least because Western Cape premier Alan Winde also deploys thousands of law enforcement officers to crime hotspots, where they are backed up by data analytics, policing control centres and surveillance technology. Worse still, the amaWinde are now reportedly working hand in glove with the military wing of the DA, known as Fidelity ADT.

But despite these superficial parallels between parties there are three reasons to be uniquely fearful of Lesufi’s militarised policing initiatives. First, the premier has been talking absolute nonsense about every sector of provincial government. Statistical analysis suggests a low probability that he is right about policing.

Second, initiatives in the Western Cape are backed by broad agreement between the provincial government and the City of Cape Town, where mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has taken the lead in the devolution of policing. In addition to law enforcement officers jointly funded with the province, Cape Town has 600 metro police officers, 690 traffic officers and specialised units for tactical response, environmental enforcement, gang and drug matters and metal theft, among others.

The city has invested in body cameras, dash cams, drones and an emergency police incident control centre. The fact that city and province are governed by the same party has proved a great boon to co-operation and co-ordination.

The situation is quite different in Gauteng, where Johannesburg public safety MMC Mgcini Tshwaku — an EFF cadre — accused Lesufi of trying to take credit for a CCTV initiative that originated in the city. Although it is difficult to get at the truth, both province and city have evidently made deals with a private company, VumaCam, which can monitor crime hotspots across the province.

While the EFF and ANC are pretending to fight — who will vote for the EFF if they know it is just a provincial ANC faction? — this problem may be resolved in a post-election sharing of the tenders (technically known as a “provincial coalition government”).

The third key point of difference is that it is not easy to imagine Winde or Hill-Lewis dressed up in a military uniform — at least not in public. As for Lesufi, nobody would be surprised if he arrived at the next state of the province event perched on the turret of a battle tank.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.