German Ambassador to South Africa Andreas Peschke says moving towards a government of national unity could be a good thing for South Africa and could help the country tackles the myriad of challenges it is facing.
He was speaking on a news channel on Monday where he said Germany was closely watching the development around coalitions and, hoping for the best.
He said what is happening in the political spectrum after the ANC lost its outright majority in parliament was usual. “It is quite natural now that the party is now looking for a broad majority in order to form a government arrangement.
“I think in times when the country is facing enormous challenges like how to fix the economy, fight unemployment, tackle load shedding, I would think it's probably a wise way to go to look for a broad majority in order to tackle these enormous challenges,” he said.
He said this happens all over the world.
“In Germany when the challenges are particularly big, we tend to have grand coalition of political forces from the right and the left of the spectrum.”
He said any arrangement that is going to be put in place to co-operate to govern the country needed to be fixed in writing to make this agreement transparent to the public. It would also enable citizens to really measure politicians who are going to govern the country against what they have promised.
He said based on the German experience, the coalition will be a complex arrangement and it could be wise to have a permanent mechanism of conflict resolution apart from usual government meetings and sitting of parliament.
“This is where political parties that form that government sit together and hammer out whatever problems that come up because otherwise such a government of unity might run into practical problems of different opinions,” he said.
The Mercury