Much can be said for the value of participation in crucial moments like this. With the ANC negotiating a coalition government, they will have to offer compensation to the small parties which support its government.

The DA has shown that their negotiation skills are flawed – the ANC has successfully undermined the intended deal between Ramaphosa and the DA by watering down the coalition into an open-door government for all small parties.

This has included the Vryheidsfront Plus. At the time their membership was initially considered just last week, the DA were busy trying to veto the accession of the Coloured identity parties (PA, GOOD) and the PAC to the coalition, hoping that the VF Plus would be the tiebreaker that got the coalition over the 2/3rds threshold necessary to enact constitutional reform.

The bloc that this collection of parties would constitute, would be a coalition of the ANC’s racialist social-democracy platform with the Anglo liberalism and the conservative forces of the Afrikaners and Zulus – a force for reasonable reform.

But this would not pass muster with the leftist forces within the party, and it seems that battle has been lost. And yet the DA and VF Plus are still at the table.

Now, there is an argument to be made that being on the field of play is better than being on the bleachers as a mere spectator, but that depends on whether you manage to score any points while you’re on the field.

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Minor victories

The VF Plus have gained some concessions in the Northern Cape by getting the ANC to publicly recognise Orania as having constitutional validity, and given them some oversight over provincial-parliamentary committees concerning local government.

This isn’t all that bad, but the problem is that such terms are easily reversed, as today’s statement from the ANC has demonstrated. What is worse, the recent deal has painted a much wider target on their backs than the quiet and apolitical existence of Orania previously attracted.

And now that the VF Plus is in in the offing for a national coalition government, they have to achieve a serious and tangible victory, or else face serious charges from their base of selling out.

With the lunatics in the Bittereinders champing at their heels, and the party reeling from voters returning to the DA this last election in the hopes of the DA winning (poor silly sausages), they have some stern calculations to make.

The one province where the VF Plus support has stabilised in the Western Cape, largely due to two factors – the stabilising influence of Dr Corne Mulder, and the Cape independence campaign, which signalled a serious commitment to the party’s core value – self-determination.

The VF Plus has had scant opportunity to exercise their values these past 30 years, being that they are a rather small party, but this is their moment to shine. And if they screw this opportunity up, recovery will be almost impossible.

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Vulnerabilities

The key vulnerability regarding cooperation with stronger parties, whether at the municipal, provincial, or national level, is that one can be perceived to be “selling out”, whether this is true or not.

This means that, if one is to achieve victories too small to be felt at the ground level, one is almost guaranteed to lose support.

The EFF and MK, knowing that they have had a cordon sanitaire drawn around them as political delinquents, have come up with demands that save face – they have demanded high cabinet positions and veto on inclusion of other parties from the governing coalition.

They will not get these demands, but they will be able to tell their supporters that the ANC is being unreasonable, and is committed to selling out to “white monopoly capital”.

Now, such a symbolic act of defiance may indeed be just symbolic, but saving face is a big deal. For the FV Plus, they run the risk of being perceived as impotent collaborators. Whether the party is willing to admit it or not, the cabinet position Pieter Mulder accepted under Jacob Zuma still haunts the party's reputation among ordinary people.

I can tell from my investigations at the local level in the Cape, that too-close collaboration with the DA has lost the party some traction in Drakenstein and the Garden Route, since the severity of the DA’s local corruption has called for them to adopt a stern watchdog role, which they have competently performed in places like Swellendam. But they have failed to act decisively on serious breaches of governing ethics on the part of the DA in recent years, and it has made them seem to some residents as if they are not a real alternative.

And that is simply when dealing with the DA, the most popular party with South African minorities.

So what should the VF Plus be bargaining for, when there is so much to lose by staying?

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Pretoria

There is one thing the VF Plus can call for in negotiations which will guarantee them massive support over the next few years, and that is achieving a separate municipality for Pretoria.

While this is unlikely to succeed, the present position, in which the ANC is rapidly gaining the upper hand in coalition negotiations by diluting the minority franchise in the GNU, it may be the only achievement big enough to save them from obliteration should they choose to remain.

I have submitted a policy proposal to the leadership of the party early this year concerning the methods for achieving Pretoria’s autonomy – what benefits it would offer to the residents, what it would mean to the Afrikaner nation, and how to go about achieving it. I will summarise my position here.

Firstly, when one looks at a map of Tshwane, one sees what looks like a big blue grasping oven glove standing out in the electoral ward map.

This enclave corresponds to the distribution of racial minorities and Afrikaans-speakers, designating an Afrikaans-language community that would immensely benefit from government services being handled by people who share their language, and deliver administrative affairs in it.

It would also guarantee that minority-interest parties, from the Liberal DA to the conservative VF Plus, can deliver to these people the government they want..

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Precedent

Now, without national and/or provincial government backing, achieving this would be close to impossible, but there is precedent for redemarcating municipal boundaries along ethnic lines when resident feel they are being neglected or sidelined.

There are rural cases where demarcation has led to conflicts over ethnicity in multiple occasions. In the recent past, several cases have occurred where traditional councils were split by municipal or even provincial boundaries, such as the Ndengeza Traditional Authority in the re-demarcation of Makhado municipality in 2000.

More pertinent are cases such as Vuwani and Malamulele in Limpopo, where tensions emerged between Tsonga and Venda groups over service delivery and access to jobs. The issue began with the merger of the Tsonga Livhubu-Xingwedzi traditional local council with the Venda Greater Thohouyandou to form Thulamela. Tsonga felt excluded from access to resources and jobs, and spent the next 15 years attempting to appeal their demarcation. In 2016, Malamulele was granted its own municipality by combining parts of Thulamela and Makhado municipalities, under the name of Collins Chabane Local Municipality. What is notable is that polling research on this process reveals that it was overwhelmingly motivated by ethnic differences, which may serve to support our case.

While Collins Chabane’s case was not settled through the courts, but through governmental processes and multi-party negotiation, one might make the argument from the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act, that if Pretoria were denied its own municipal representation, it would constitute unfair treatment, since such provisions were afforded to others.

But which precise legal strategy to take is a matter for legal professionals – suffice it to say that there are angles one can take to achieve this end. But without the approval of the ANC at a national level, it would be an extremely difficult process, involving the necessary victory of an anti-ANC coalition in Gauteng, and a Constitutional case against the Municipal Demarcation Board, which is stacked with ANC officials.

While there is a path to achieving Pretoria's autonomy after 2029 (I have written about this in some detail, though it is not public), it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. While the VF Plus are highly unlikely to achieve this within the GNU, if they do not put something serious on the table, their participation will likely be seen from the ground level as a capitulation.