Umm Muhammed Umar

Radio Islam spoke to Paul Berkowitz, Director of the Third Republic, from the ROC in Pretoria, about what his impression was of the local elections that took place on Monday.  Berkowitz expressed his shock at the low turnout, saying, “that was one of the factors that we’re most interested in, because it has such a knock-on effect on everything else, including how well the big parties and the small parties do.” He said that while they had been expecting a low turnout, they were concerned that it would be a historic low, and much lower even then the lower bound of what they had thought was possible.

Berkowitz said that he was also worried about how successful some of the new parties were, including ActionSA, and the fact that some of the smaller parties were starting to win wards, which suggested that they were becoming more attractive to voters.

Regarding the votes counted by Tuesday morning, Berkowitz said that they were delaying projections, more than they normally would, and that it appeared as if everyone else was doing so too.  He said that under normal circumstances they have would have had a good idea of what was happening from municipality to municipality based on things like the CSIR’s projection of the vote. Nevertheless, he added, “But what looks likely is that the DA will retain the City of Cape Town Metro although at the reduced majority, but a healthy majority still……. it’s looking almost certain that there will be coalitions again across Gauteng, and possibly coalitions in eThekwini.

Coalitions, however, haven’t worked in the main in the last five years, and had left service delivery hamstrung. Berkowitz said, “We had an unprecedented number of coalitions in 2016, and many of them collapsed or became dysfunctional in places like Nelson Mandela Bay and Johannesburg.”  He added, “there is a greater need and a greater role for active citizenry, whether it’s individuals or civil society or community organizations to make sure that these coalitions work, to make sure that political parties act in a mature way and don’t try and consolidate power, but actually deliver on their responsibilities and mandate which is service delivery and functional local government.”