Oh boy, the latest polls are out. In many of the big cities, from Johannesburg and Pretoria, to Gqeberha, and Ekurhuleni, the Democratic Alliance (DA) is averaging between the high 20s and the high 30s, and the African National Congress (ANC) between the mid-20s and the mid-30s. The chief exceptions are Durban, where the ANC is below 20%, and Cape Town, where the DA leads outright. In scores of secondary centres, the same kind of ANC/DA split, with each in the 20s or 30s, holds. What do the numbers mean? Answer: The fragmentation of the Union of South Africa.

Can that be cobbled into workable coalitions? Not by relying on the rats and mice parties. That will just be a mess. There are just too many of those, and each one will want to be the mayor and control half the exco posts. The only exception is the Freedom Front Plus, which behaves with statesmanlike maturity.

But there is a way. Average all the polls to date (except for those from grumpy Mordor), and something interesting happens. In Johannesburg, Pretoria, Gqeberha, Ekurhuleni (and many smaller places), the joint DA/ANC tally is over 50%. By comparison, of the big cities, a combination of the ANC, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) only gets over the line in Durban and Ekurhuleni.

In theory (a humorous anecdote will follow below), getting the ANC and the DA together as the two biggest parties in the country is the way out. Geordin Hill-Lewis should consider stepping into the vacuum and telling President Cyril Ramaphosa that the two of them, as the leaders of the two biggest parties in the country, need to get together and sort this out.

Again, in theory, that is the only coherent political solution that makes sense for South Africa. The DA is a party of the established middle classes, and one, as this newspaper showed last month, where black supporters now outnumber whites. The ANC’s only hope of relevance is to be the party of the aspirant middle class, a constituency that also covers the rural poor, as people there live vicariously through their children and grandchildren who have gone to the cities to find a better life.

But for that deal to work, the ANC would need to stop messing the DA around in the Government of National Unity (GNU). It would have to flip the Gauteng “alternative” GNU back to a DA/ANC deal and do the same in Pretoria. It would be absurd to think that a DA/ANC deal will work in Johannesburg while the province continues to be run by the ANC/EFF/MKP.

Hill-Lewis’s offer should be one for Ramaphosa to refuse, so that it can be plain to the public where the obstacle to national progress in South Africa continues to lie. Ramaphosa may be too feckless to accept the offer and may prefer instead to continue burning the candle at both ends and entertaining every possible manifestation of a GNU, regardless of the paralysis this causes.

If that ANC/DA deal is not done, then fragmentation continues, and the outcome for South Africa is something that this newspaper has set out in very precise detail, together with the strategy families should follow to thrive in the fragmented enclave future that awaits.

On theory and practice. The story is told of a boy who comes home from school and tells his dad that tomorrow he has to explain to the class the difference between theory and practice, and asks if his dad can help. The dad says yes and asks the boy to go and find his sister and ask her if she would sleep with Steve Hofmeyr for a million rand. The boy comes back and says she said she would, which is what the dad says he suspected. He then sends the boy off to ask his mother the same thing. He comes back and says that, like his sister, the mom says she would too. Again, the dad says that’s what he suspected – and then tells his son, “You see, my boy, in theory we could be millionaires, but in practice we live here with two whores in the house.”

And this may be the election story for South Africa too. In theory, ANC/DA works well, and in theory the DA could drag the ANC there, but in practice the ANC is just too ideologically and morally corrupted to step up. That leaves the DA with limited options, a pity for the country and a reality that leads deeper into an enclave future.