The outcome of the recent local government elections constitutes a severe setback for the ANC, but insofar as no other party marshalled majority support, on its own or in alliance, there may now be a period of instability in local government. This is part of a broader crisis of democratic life that is unlikely to be remedied by existing political parties. “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”- Antonio Gramsci: Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1971, p 276.