Coalition talks | Deputy President Paul Mashatile and Western Cape Premier Alan Winde at a coalitions conference at the University of Western Cape in August 2023.

Coalition negotiations will come down to a choice between democracy and kleptocracy, the News24 editors write.

The election result of 29 May 2024 has brought South Africa’s political parties to a stark historical moment. Do they form a coalition to safeguard and strengthen our constitutional democracy, or is this the beginning of a slide into populist kleptocracy?  

These are the only real choices available to the likes of the ANC, the DA and the IFP – parties who claim to have the Constitution at the core of their being – as populists like the MK Party, the EFF, and the PA continue to grow and fully enter our body politic.

Between them, the MKP, EFF and PA are likely to end on about 25% of the national vote. That is a dangerously high percentage of support for parties who have openly declared they would do away with or fundamentally undermine the Constitution.

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Jacob Zuma headed the largest state capture project in the history of democratic South Africa. As leader of the ANC, he oversaw the destruction of institutions of democracy like the State Security Agency, the National Prosecuting Authority and the Hawks. 

His son and friends, the Guptas, captured our state-owned enterprises like Eskom, Transnet and Denel and turned them into their piggy banks.

Yet, over one million people who voted for the MK Party want Zuma back as president. They believe life was better under his administration and ignore entirely the damage wrought by his nine years in office.

He and his supporters use lies, fabrications and social media to further these fantasies about life under Zuma. They are knocking on the doors of the Union Buildings. 

Sometime in June, Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, who loudly supported the violent July 2021 riots in KwaZulu-Natal, will be sworn in as a Member of Parliament for the MKP.

The time for jokes is over. The Patriotic Alliance, who advocate for the return of the death penalty and is led by two former bank robbers, will occupy a number of seats in Parliament after June.

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This is the moment for democrats to stand together and choose the future of South Africa over political differences. The alternative is too ghastly to contemplate: a slide into a populist kleptocracy that could reduce the country to ashes.

The ANC, with its proud history of human rights and non-racialism, was at the centre of the state capture project. President Cyril Ramaphosa has started to rid the party of kleptocrats like Ace Magashule, but many more tainted individuals are left in Cabinet and government.

This moment allows Ramaphosa to accelerate his reform agenda and replace those implicated in state capture and corruption with coalition partners.

It is an opportune moment for those in the ANC who are aligned with Zuma and his kleptocratic project to leave. The future of the country is at stake.