So much for the “divorce papers” which Mosiuoa Lekota served on the ANC last year: the marriage has barely been annulled and already there is talk within COPE’s ranks of renewing the vows.
Last week, COPE’s presidential candidate, Reverend Mvume Dandala, said that his party would not rule out a coalition with the ANC. His exact words were: “If the ANC were to commit itself to some of the values that we are going to put forward, particularly the need to overcome corruption in this country, we would not rule it out completely”.
I have said from the outset that COPE is good for democracy because it helps to break the ANC monolith. And, while COPE is splitting the ANC, the DA is building the alternative. On this reading, COPE can play a positive role in South African politics.
But there is a conspiracy theory doing the rounds which suggests that COPE may actually help to entrench the ANC’s dominance. It goes something like this:
The idea for the formation of COPE was mooted by ANC strategists who realised that the election of Jacob Zuma as President of the ANC would alienate a key section of the ANC’s support base. The disaffected would include supporters of Thabo Mbeki and people who could not countenance supporting a presidential candidate with a cloud of corruption hanging over him.
Knowing that the ANC was likely to lose their support, COPE was formed (by the ANC) in a bid to find a home for disaffected former ANC voters. Once these voters had found this new home, they would be delivered back to the ANC in the form of an ANC/COPE coalition after the election. In other words, any votes lost by the ANC in the Mbeki/Zuma fallout would be recouped in this process. In this scenario, a vote for COPE would turn out to be a vote for Zuma.
I do not buy this conspiracy theory. Politicians, despite what some people might think, are not that Machiavellian. And the ANC does not have the capacity to execute such a strategy. But I do believe there is a possibility that COPE may form a coalition with the ANC, even without it having been the product of an ANC grand plan. Reverend Dandala’s statement about going into coalition lends credence to that belief, as does his general attitude towards the ANC.
Dandala is unwilling to confront or criticise the leadership of the ANC. In particular, he has no problem with the ANC fielding Jacob Zuma as its presidential candidate, despite the fact that he is an accused in an ongoing criminal trial involving 783 counts of corruption. Dandala has refused to comment on Zuma’s suitability for the highest office, side-stepping the question by saying: “I would like to leave that to the people of South Africa to decide”.
