MMUSI MAIMANE

South Africa’s coalition politics is conveniently presented as a binary choice between two outcomes. Voters are incorrectly told, I’d argue, that it is either an ANC-led arrangement with the DA as an ostensibly reluctant party or an ANC-led arrangement with the EFF and/or MK Party.

This second option, we’re told, will write the country’s democratic-era obituary with its recklessness and radical ideology. South Africa’s political table currently has three legs.

Those being the ANC, the DA and the collection of parties on the other side of the political spectrum, increasingly represented by the EFF and MK Party. Every coalition negotiation and municipal power struggle takes place around that three-legged table.

And the problem with a three-legged table is that it can stand. But it cannot stand securely if the weight placed on it is constantly shifting. The missing leg is a pragmatic, centrist political force prepared to work with others without becoming captured by them. That is where Bosa has a role to play.

Because coalitions are not going away. The 2024 election made that clear at the national level. The ANC lost its majority for the first time since 1994, forcing it into a government of national unity. At the local level, coalition government has already become a prominent feature of our political landscape.

The ANC and DA have spent considerable political energy negotiating with one another. Yet their relationship is constrained by the reality that neither party can afford to push the other too far. The DA fears that if it pushes the ANC too hard, the ANC may simply look elsewhere and form an alternative arrangement with parties such as the EFF or MK.

The ANC, meanwhile, knows that the DA has limited room to manoeuvre if it wants to prevent precisely that outcome.

Whether the ANC governs with the DA or with other parties, the ANC remains at the centre of the system. It remains the hegemonic mainstay of the political terrain.

What is missing is not a different combination of political parties around the table. We need to change the balance of that table. We need a fourth leg that stabilises the table and changes the conversation.

A party such as Bosa can enter a coalition as a force with clear principles about what government must deliver. I forward three propositions. One, put us in the room. Citizens deserve a voice in coalition negotiations that is focused on outcomes rather than political power.

The second is what we bring into that room. An undeniable commitment to constitutionalism, clean government, capable institutions, accountability and practical reform. We are not interested in choosing between the ANC’s patronage politics, the DA’s privatisation, and the dangerous populism of the EFF and MK Party.

And third, we bring an economic plan. This matters because South Africa’s problems are not only problems of poor governance. They are also problems of economic policy and the lack of economic growth.

Our economy remains trapped by policies that are too often old, outdated and comfortable. We have an unemployment crisis. Economic growth remains far below what is required to absorb millions of people into work. Businesses struggle to invest and expand. Small businesses face unnecessary barriers.

The government spends enormous amounts of money without getting the economic growth and jobs that South Africans need in return. A poorly managed government cannot deliver prosperity. It puts our already limited resources at risk through wasteful expenditure, poorly planned projects, institutional failure and corruption.

Every rand lost in this way is a rand that cannot be invested in schools, infrastructure, health care, jobs or the growth of our economy. The next chapter of South African politics must therefore be about effective governance.

While politicians ask who gets which ministry, who controls which municipality, who gets which committee chairmanship and which party can prevent another party from gaining power, citizens are asking different questions.

How do I get a job? How do I afford my home? How do I get my business off the ground? How do I get reliable electricity, water and public transport? How do I give my children a better future?

Coalition negotiations that do not answer those questions are negotiations about politicians. A new party can be a stabilising force by insisting on measurable commitments and demanding transparency in procurement.

It can make economic reform a condition of co-operation. Bosa is not interested in being permanently opposed to the ANC or permanently opposed to the DA. We are interested in being permanently opposed to bad government.

South Africa desperately needs political actors prepared to solve the problem. It requires the willingness to work with people with whom we disagree, without surrendering our principles.

This is the politics of the radical centre which offers practical solutions to people’s problems, grounded in principle but unafraid of pragmatism. It is South Africa’s third way.

When Bosa enters a coalition negotiation, we will be negotiating for outcomes. Our plan for prosperity gives us the basis to say: these are the reforms that South Africans need, these are the commitments we expect, and these are the measures against which any government should be judged.

Our ambition must be equally clear. To take South Africa’s economy from roughly R7-trillion in GDP and work towards doubling it over the next five years. That requires a fundamentally different approach to growth, investment, infrastructure, entrepreneurship and job creation.

The current three-legged table has produced too much compromise that serves political parties and too little compromise that serves citizens. We cannot keep doing this.

The answer is not to pretend that the ANC will disappear, that the DA will suddenly become the dominant force, or that the EFF and MK Party will simply go away. The answer is to introduce another choice.

A fourth leg gives voters and coalition partners another option. A coalition of four creates a pragmatic, radical-centre force capable of working with others while remaining independent of them.

It reduces the ability of any one party to hold the political system hostage to its own interests. It is undeniable that South Africa’s coalition era is here.

The question is whether we continue to arrange the same three legs around the same table, hoping that somehow the result will be different. Or whether we embrace the fourth leg that gives the table balance.

A new balance of power, designed around the interests of the people who have been waiting far too long for government to work.