The leader of South Africa’s main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) said his party opposes forming a coalition with the ruling African National Congress (ANC) in order to govern the country should it need to.

“We don’t want to be in government with the ANC,” John Steenhuisen said Thursday in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “I don’t think we’re going to solve the country’s problems by having the same people who are responsible for the economic crisis, the social crisis, and the infrastructure crisis sitting around the table.”

South Africa is on the cusp of an era of national coalition politics after elections scheduled for May 29. Opinion polls suggest the ruling ANC will lose its overall majority for the first time since it came to power at the end of apartheid 30 years ago.

Steenhuisen, 48, has spearheaded the formation of a bloc of 11 opposition parties that aims to form a coalition government after the vote. Members of the Multi Party Charter have ruled out working with the ANC or the populist Economic Freedom Fighters, currently the third-biggest party, and polls show they’ll collectively struggle to obtain even 40% support. A survey by the Social Research Foundation indicates that an ANC-DA tie-up would be the one favoured by most South Africans.

The DA, which espouses market-friendly policies, currently controls the Western Cape — the only province not run by the ANC — and won 21% of the vote in the last national election in 2019. It has also wrested control of several major towns from the ANC in municipal elections by forming alliances with other parties, but those coalitions have proven unstable, with power changing hands several times and some services grinding to a halt as a result.

A survey released by the SRF this month shows support for the DA is slipping in the Western Cape, and it may be forced into a coalition in the province, though it's likely to remain by far the biggest party in the region.

The DA faced internal turmoil when Mmusi Maimane, its first Black leader, exited in 2019 and a number of its other senior Black members followed suit, with some of them taking issue with the DA’s policy on race. While the municipalities it controls are regarded as being among the country’s better-run, its top leadership is predominantly White and the party has struggled to increase its support among the country’s Black majority.

Among the policy proposals outlined in the DA’s manifesto are the scrapping of race-based economic redress — a cornerstone of ANC policy — and converting a temporary monthly stipend that was introduced to cushion the unemployed against the impact of the coronavirus pandemic into a permanent job seekers grant at an additional cost of R39.6-billion.

It also favours breaking the monopoly of state power utility Eskom, whose failure to adequately maintain its plants and invest in new generation capacity has led to years of rolling blackouts. The DA would instead increase investment in electricity transmission.