ANC Deputy General Secretary Jessie Duarte says the party has learnt lessons from coalition negotiations in 2016 to avoid making the same mistakes.
Duarte was speaking to Sowetan at the IEC national results centre in Pretoria west on Tuesday night when it emerged that the party will need to negotiate with other parties to form governments in more than 20 municipalities in which no party had secured a clear majority.
She said negotiations and agreements on coalitions will be driven from Luthuli House with regions getting consulted.
“We’ve done it before (leaving regions to decide on coalitions) and the mistakes were huge because it wasn’t based on principles and that’s fundamentally what we want. We not saying there won’t be consultations but the final decision will be a national one,” Duarte said.
As it emerged that the EFF, ActionSA and the Freedom Front Plus are most likely to be kingmakers especially in the three Gauteng metros which look likely not to produce an outright winner, Duarte shot down the suggestion of the kingmaker tag.
“When people say they’re kingmakers I always smile, because for me you don’t gazette yourself as a kingmaker, a kingmaker can never be a partner as it’s a commandist perspective, which says I’m coming to you because I want to be a mayor,” Duarte said.
She said the ANC had ruled out getting into coalitions with parties who are on the extreme opposite end of the party.
“If our principles don’t converge, there are political parties who are on the opposite site of the ANC and our dreams are different and it’s unlikely that our dreams will ever converge,” Duarte said.
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