Politics and conflicts in South African cooperative government: analysis of the discursive issues under the 1996 constitution

Abstract

Globally, there is welter of evidence demonstrating that cooperative government is likely achievable where the same political party in charge of the national government is also a power holder at sub-governments level. This has been the experience of the South Africa's African National Congress (ANC) which has been in charge of the national government and the majority of provinces for 30 years, except in few instances where opposition parties are in control. Since the ANC lost Western Cape (WC) province to the Democratic Alliance in 2004, cooperative government has been a difficult practice due in part to party ideological differences. The contradictions often play out at executive levels but the silence of legislation, in as far as ensuring that cooperative government is achievable for common goal, necessitates attention. This non-empirical article refers to numerous cases of intergovernmental tensions, with the intention being to debate the discursive issues under the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 (hereafter referred to as 1996 Constitution). Following comprehensive reflection, the article concluded that the extent to which national government is showing inherent inertia to work with WC and other areas where the DA is governing has been perpetuated by the lacuna in the current legal framework, but most of the conflicts have much to do with party ideology and politics of the 'left' where parties just oppose executive decisions and programmes not on substance but because they are official opposition. As a result, the continuation of these actions stands to bedevil the national and provincial executive relations in a decentralised South Africa.