As South Africa’s political landscape shifts, alliances between long-time adversaries in the Government of National Unity are forming, spurred by President Cyril Ramaphosa’s proactive stance. Meanwhile, opposition parties like the EFF and MKP face internal fractures, with notable resignations and firings. EFF’s leader, Julius Malema, anticipates further MP losses. Western Cape Premier Alan Winde expresses optimism about decentralized governance, contrasting past rigidities with current cooperative dynamics. The upcoming 2026 municipal elections promise to be a pivotal moment in a nation grappling with rapidly evolving political tides.
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By John Matisonn
While longtime political adversaries were feeling their way towards fixing government together, the populist EFF and MK parties were riven by new fractures this week. ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
The MKP fired 15 of its MPs and the EFF’s Deputy President and prominent EFF MP Jimmy Manyi resigned to join the MKP. EFF leader Julius Malema admitted he expected to lose more of his MPs in the coming weeks.
These developments are early skirmishes ahead of the municipal elections in 2026, when control of many local councils are at stake in the wake of a general election which blew up three decades of relatively predictable politics.
By contrast with the musical chairs opposition, officials of the DA, ANC and IFP in the Government of National Unity (GNU) appear to be working in a harmony that would have been hard to imagine just eight weeks ago.
Illustrating what he called a “new vibe” in government, DA Western Cape Premier Alan Winde described his meetings with newly appointed ministers of both the opposition and the ANC as a newly constructive atmosphere.
Winde attributed this to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s insistence that progress be speeded up. “He seems more proactive, more determined,” Winde said of the president in an address to the Cape Town Press Club.
Winde was more optimistic than ever about progress in devolving more power in policing and railways to his province and metros, privatization of specific rail lines, and ending long deadlocked efforts to prise loose hundreds of acres of urban Cape Town land from the Defence Department for new housing.
Contrasting the cooperative approach of new Police Minister Senzo Mchunu with his predecessor, Winde described Mchunu’s response to his appeal to devolve more policing power to the cities.
“We can have that discussion and find new models,” Winde said was Mchunu’s reply. The response of his predecessor as Police Minister, Bheki Cele, to the same request could not have been more different: “Not over my dead body.”
His meeting with ANC Transport Minister Barbara Creecy gave him hope for a breakthrough giving municipalities more control of passenger rail transport.
Another stark contrast occurred when he asked IFP Cooperative Government Minister Velinkosini Hlabisa to declare a state of disaster in the face of downpours of rain, and he got the declaration in four hours. A similar problem last year left the province waiting for an answer for months.
Resolution of long stalled discussions to release land locating Ysterplaat and Youngsfield airfields could materially ease Cape Town’s acute housing shortage. Previous defence ministers have demanded hundreds of millions of rands from the city to release this land. Early discussions have left Winde more optimistic this time.
This coalition government became necessary after the sharp bite ex-President Jacob Zuma’s Mkhonto we Sizwe Party took out of ANC support in the election, netting the MKP 14.5% of the vote and leaving the ANC nine percent below the 50% needed for a majority.
But since election day the MKP has been plagued by continued instability both on its parliamentary benches and in the party’s top structures. Party officials at the highest levels have resigned or been fired only to return days soon after. There appear to be factional battles for control of the party’s financial resources and its parliamentary seats.
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), second in size to the MKP on the opposition benches, saw the surprise resignation of its deputy president, Floyd Shivambu, on Thursday to join the MKP. Rumours of tension between him and the party leader, Julius Malema, have circulated for weeks after the party’s disappointing showing in the May 29 election.
Yet the decision caused a political shockwave, since the two started the EFF together and were regarded as the closest of friends. They held a joint news conference in which they indicated this political break would not affect their personal friendship, and Shivambu described his new political home as aiming at the same goals as the party he left.
Malema and Shivambu have been in the spotlight amid allegations they received money from the VBS Mutual Bank, which collapsed leaving small municipalities and poor depositors in desperation. Both have denied the allegations.
For all the parties, the local elections in 2026 could be a watershed as the fallout of the new government coalitions and their opponents is highly unpredictable.
For some small parties included in the “Government of National Unity” whose only MP received a cabinet seat, the term of this government could be last shot at power for ageing leaders and their political parties.
The leader of the former liberation movement the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), Mzwanele Nyhontso, was sworn in to the post of Minister of Land Reform and Rural Development, but now faces a revolt by his party, whose officials say he took the job without consulting them.
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