Let the parties that won lead — that was the position of Afrika Mayibuye President Floyd Shivambu at the national Results Operations Centre (ROC) on Friday, where he vowed his movement would not block coalition talks with petty grudges, personal scores or the “childishness” that has poisoned South African coalition politics for years.
Shivambu launched a direct shot at the way coalitions have been handled since 2016.
“I guess with the passage of time, there is the maturity of the political role players because there’s too much childish politics that happen in South Africa,” Shivambu said.
“I know this because I’ve been intimately involved with negotiations after the 2016 local government elections, after the 2021 local government elections, after the 2024 general elections, I led the negotiations for one of the political parties, and I can tell you without blinking that the reason why there couldn’t be agreement amongst the progressive forces was because of childishness, people being childish in terms of how certain things must be handled.”
He did not spare his former allies.
“Even by the way, the approach of the MK after the 2024 general elections was childish. And when I was Secretary General, I addressed that the president so much to say that in all circumstances and controversies we were supposed to be leading the province of KwaZulu-Natal.”
For Shivambu, the problem is not ideology. It is ego.
“There is a lot of childishness that happens amongst all role players. Like people are worried about their own personal interest. So and so did this to me. So and so once said this about me. I will never work with them.”
“They did not do politics for the sake and for the sake of the people. If our agenda is about the people, it must be very easy to unify all the progressive forces moving forward. But currently, there are no conditions for such.”
Shivambu said Afrika Mayibuye’s position is that the leading party in each municipality should be allowed to govern, adding that his movement would support future legislation to regulate how coalitions are managed.
“That is why we had candidates in almost all municipalities except the local municipalities under the Mapak district of Northern Cape, except Hasefa and Solenda in the Western Cape, except Ukama in the Eastern Cape, except Longo in KwaZulu-Natal, but the rest of the other municipalities were registered presents, and we are happy that even though we will not receive seats in all of them, we have registered presence,” Shivambu added.
“We could have taken the approach which was taken by other material parties of concentrating in one corner of South Africa. I said that earlier. We could have taken a posture of let us just go and launch ourselves in Limpopo. Let us just concentrate in housing and then spread from there. We have spread the presence of Afrika Mayibuye movement in the entirety of South Africa, and we have got something tangible to work with now.”
Shivambu said the movement would now focus on consolidating its organisational structures and continuing its programmes on migrant rights, agricultural support and community empowerment to improve people’s lives and livelihoods. He added that the party respected voters, noting that it had started from zero.
Despite reports of minor discrepancies, he said there was nothing that materially affected the outcome.
“There are discrepancies which are that are minor, which do not have any material impact on elections. I think the political role players, particularly leaders of political parties, must not be oversensitive. Elections are very complex. You know, to manage hundreds of thousands of candidates in more than 23,000 voting stations is not an easy thing,” he said.
“We have had reports of some wayward IEC officials and some of the political parties who will be distributing T-shirts inside voting stations, like it happened in Ward 10 in Collins Chabane. But we do not innovate that. We accept whatever we have got now, and we’ll move on. We know that those who are in power will try to abuse it. But the good thing is that society and the system is taking them out.”
Shivambu urged all South Africans to accept the election outcome and process, and praised the IEC for running what he described as a clean election despite the massive logistical challenge. He dismissed disputes over the results as side issues, saying voters had spoken and their decision must be respected.