UDM leader General Bantu Holomisa is not prepared to serve in cabinet with those who still have Bosasa and Gupta matters hanging over their heads.
Holomisa was responding to Sowetan’s question about his party’s approach towards coalitions ahead of Wednesday’s national elections.
That’s probably the clearest indication of what demands Holomisa may put on the table should the ANC approach him for a possible coalition if the polls fail to produce an outright winner.
Several ANC leaders, including environmental affairs minister Nomvula Mokonyane and former president Jacob Zuma, were heavily implicated in former Bosasa COO Angelo Agrizzi’s testimony at the Zondo commission into state capture.
The former Transkei homelands leader said the UDM’s approach towards coalitions was not about negotiating on cabinet positions but about “putting the interests of the people first”.
“Why must we serve in the cabinet with people whose positions have not been cleared with regards to Bosasa and the Guptas?
“That’s the beauty of coalitions, we’re promoting checks and balances, we’re not just there to get a salary,” Holomisa said.
He said coalitions, which have become a reality, were more like “a way of cleansing the whole country from the mess we’ve found ourselves in” in the past 25 years.
Holomisa, however, also believes there should be laws passed to govern coalitions.
“We need a regulation to govern the coalitions because our system was based on the 50-plus-one majority rule and things changed in 2016 in a big way.”
He said the laws should set out what should happen immediately where there’s no party with a 50-plus majority win before a fresh election could take place, for example.
“It needs to be clarified that if you have 49%, or you’re either short of one or two percent, you’ve not won the election and you have to be sensitive to the views of others you want to partner with.”
Holomisa’s views on how a coalition government should work may be informed by a failed partnership with the DA in the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality in Port Elizabeth. The UDM entered into what many described as a “marriage of convenience” with the DA after the 2016 local government elections, relegating the ANC to the opposition benches.
However, the UDM later got into bed with the DA’s nemesis to form a new governing coalition with the ANC following unresolved differences with the DA.
Ousted DA mayor Athol Trollip has labelled the new coalition as a “coalition of corruption”.
Holomisa is, however, unfazed by allegations of corruption levelled against the UDM’s Mongameli Bobani, the current mayor of Nelson Mandela Bay, by Trollip. He accused the DA of making claims of corruption against those it had differences with.
“It’s the strategy of the DA, if they differ with you. We’ve seen it with Patricia de Lille [former mayor of Cape Town],” Holomisa said.
