Freedom Front Plus wants to be a coalition of minorities
It’s already tested this approach in Western Cape, when in 2019 and 2021, it campaigned in Coloured communities who shared a common mother-tongue - wooing well-known local Coloured politicians to break the stereotype and to stand as premier and mayoral candidates.
Freedom Front (FF) Plus leader Corné Mulder spoke to EWN at his office in Parliament, in Cape Town, on 27 February 2025. Picture: Lindsay Dentlinger/EWN
CAPE TOWN - New Freedom Front (FF) Plus leader Corné Mulder is readying to reposition his party - to be one that extends beyond the Afrikaner community out of which it was born - to include other minorities.
It’s already tested this approach in Western Cape, when in 2019 and 2021, it campaigned in Coloured communities who shared a common mother-tongue - wooing well-known local Coloured politicians to break the stereotype and to stand as premier and mayoral candidates.
Mulder said his party can’t expect to survive based on its opposition to one party, neither if its views are too similar to another.
“You have to position yourself in the middle in terms of where you stand, your own vision and what you believe and put that to the electorate,” he told EWN last week, following his election.
Thirty years later, Mulder said while the party’s base remains the Afrikaner community out of which it was born, it’s intent on extending its mission and ideas to other minority groups.
“I would like to see that the party becomes a coalition of minorities that find themselves grouped together in an umbrella called the FF Plus,” he said.
The key to success is representing what’s in the heart and minds of the people the party wishes to represent.
Mulder wants his party to listen to the grassroots and bring that to the table for discussion.
“People may belong to different things, they may belong to a trade union, or to a civic organisation, but when they think in terms of politics, when it’s election time, I want to position the party and grow the party so that we become the natural political home.”
QUIET CAMPAIGNING
In a rather quiet affair, South Africa’s longest-serving parliamentarian since 1988, Mulder was elected unopposed, as his party’s new leader.
He’s taken over from Pieter Groenewald - the Correctional Services minister - who had been at the helm since 2016.
Keeping the elective conference on the down-low, Mulder said, is just the way the party chooses to handle its business, in what’s often a cut-throat affair in the country’s major parties.
Hailing from a family of pre-democracy politicians, he’s only the FF Plus’s fourth leader since its inception in 1994 - the second being his older brother, Pieter Mulder.
“We don’t do it like the other parties with open campaigning outside and making everything known in public. There’s lots of campaigning happening internally and people positioning and knowing what they want to do etc, but we found in the past, it’s better for the party to not shout from the roofs and to do it internally. There was some speculation in the public, but my name was never mentioned,” said Mulder.
The party’s constitution dictates that an elective conference is held every three years. This one was supposed to take place last November.
However, new constitutional amendments, including the inclusion of a credo on what the party stands for, delayed the election.
Constitutionally, the party’s elective conference can be delayed by up to a year.
Mulder has, in the past, declined two previous nominations to lead the party, preferring his election to be a unanimous one, although admitting it’s not the way democracy generally works.
This time around, he agreed, only for Groenewald to indicate to the meeting of a federal council comprising 140 delegates from all the provinces and the youth branch, that he would not be standing again to focus on his ministerial portfolio.
GOVERNMENT OF NATIONAL UNITY
Mulder said Groenewald’s position in the Cabinet of the Government of National Unity (GNU) will be unaffected by the change in leadership, and Mulder will lead both nationally and in parliament.
“We are very happy. I think if you do an evaluation of the ministers since the formation, he’s doing most likely, one of the best. And we want that to continue,” said Mulder of Groenewald’s seven months in office.
“As long as we are part of the Government of National Unity, there’s no reason that should change.”
Despite diametrically opposed views on many policy matters from race-based policies, to Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and land expropriation, Mulder said his party won’t be reacting in a knee-jerk fashion to bones of contention.
“We need to be around the table where decisions are taken. But then we all need to take a deep breath and say how do we accommodate each other. How do we get agreement on the budget now, because that’s the new tricky one. And when it comes to new policies and new bills, how do we accommodate that.”
He said his party was caught off guard by the finance minister’s proposal to increase value-added tax (VAT) by two percentage points in 2025’S budget, and it won’t agree to a tax hike, especially not to fund the civil service wage bill.
Mulder said, ideally, the GNU parties should have started their administration with the national dialogue that would have spelled out future policy positions - especially foreign policy, which he doesn’t think the African National Congress (ANC) should be foisting on its coalition parties.
Mulder doesn’t buy the ANC’s claims of neutrality and non-alignment in its dealings with foreign nations. He thinks the GNU should be emulating the example of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“He is putting his own country first. We should do the same. Put South Africa first. Our country’s interest is to be neutral - to trade with Russia, to trade with China, but also to keep our door open to the United States. We don’t have to be on this ideological crusade, putting all our eggs in the BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa] basket. Why do we do that?”
Mulder predicts implementing policy will become more difficult down the line if the GNU doesn’t come up with a common mandate and programme of government, soon.
“If we are going to have a situation where every minister in his department who comes from a specific party decides to implement policy according to his party, it’s going to be chaos, it will fall apart.”
Mulder accepts that statutory deadlines didn’t make it possible for common ground to be reached before the formation of the seventh administration, but he said parties must accept that none of their mandates won the day in the 2024 elections, and they have to negotiate and compromise.
PREPARING FOR MORE COALITIONS
In preparation for the next polls, Mulder said he would be meeting with party structures to refine his party’s policies and strategy.
But he said interacting with communities at the grassroots level will be paramount.
“Our biggest challenge is at local government level. That’s the government level closest to the people. That’s where the failures lie in terms of service delivery, infrastructure, economic sustainability,” said Mulder referring to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s remarks in February’s State of the Nation Address (SONA).
“We have to take all of that onboard and then position ourselves to be the voice that represents our community, but also other communities because in the end, after that election, I predict we will have even more coalitions.”
Mulder said parties who commit themselves to coalitions, need to be more serious about the partnerships they enter into.
In Western Cape, the FF Plus has bumped heads with the Democratic Alliance (DA) in municipalities where they govern together, which at times, have led to acrimonious break-ups.
“A coalition is not there to try and outsmart your opponent and tolerate them until you don’t need them anymore and can govern on your own,” said Mulder.
A budget bust-up between the DA and FF Plus in the Oudtshoorn municipality led to the collapse of their coalition there in 2024. Now in partnership with the ANC, the party has the mayoral chain.
“It’s a new thing for all of us. You can’t have your own way. If you’ve been used to - whether that’s the DA or the ANC - governing your way, for so many years, and suddenly you can’t, then you must understand your coalition partner is not there to give you the necessary votes when you want to have your own way. We all have to go through that learning curve.”
Mulder is hoping the next local government elections will yield more mature coalitions and more time to come up with a common mandate to ensure progress in municipalities.