Last year I wrote a 2034 optimistic time travel piece on SA; many saw it as naïve.
2023 was a hard year to be bullish on SA. The prevailing argument went that the higher stages of power outages made grid collapse and anarchy inevitable. The African National Congress (ANC) would steal the 2024 election and militarise the state, hanging on for infinity.
And now we have the power crisis largely tackled and a Government of National Unity (GNU). It is closer to a multi-party coalition, including the ANC and the Democratic Alliance (DA).
Of yesteryear’s predictions, this was the scenario most frequently missed.
Why would the liberator shun its hard-left cousins on its day of reckoning, and instead turn to its market-friendly adversary?
I always believed that the ANC was a deeply misunderstood organisation.
Being the last of Africa’s ‘liberation’ movements, it witnessed ruin when the liberator turned tyrant. To destroy things would wreck the ANC’s legacy.
Many now claim that the GNU will not hold. How the goalposts shift!
It may well not.
The DA now realises why many commentators were advocating a looser ‘confidence and supply’ arrangement. A full coalition, the argument went, would come in 2029, after the ANC plunges to 25% and the DA gains more exposure to national government. Relinquishing the role of opposition may be political capital lost. That included the intense nitpicking of shadow ministers. A closer partnership is dangerous when revelations are pouring out about ANC wrongdoing in office.
Yet a view now on how ministries have been run offers the DA deeper insight, as the new Public Works Minister has revealed past complicity in cyber hacking.
And the point is more about moving the dial rather than five-year liberal democracy shock therapy.
On that basis, I remain optimistic.
A first is to look beyond ‘how many positions the DA did not get in cabinet’. True, the DA only received 6 ministerial positions from a cabinet of 32. Yet when one looks at the total ministries and portfolio committees received by its pro-market allies: the FF+ (Freedom Front Plus) and IFP (Inkatha Freedom Party), and the better elements of the ANC, that number rises to around 16.
And any previous cabinet of the past 15 stagnant years was ANC only. Political competition has been introduced.
Author Vinothan Naidoo argues that the President’s ‘choices have been driven more (if not exclusively) by bona fides and pragmatism than by trying to neutralise the influence of opposition parties in cabinet’.
The current cabinet may also change in future reshuffles.
If the DA can make inroads in its portfolio of education, for example, such as eliminating pit latrines in schools and taming the debilitating teacher unions, that will be enormous political capital gained.
A second and related factor is that the deal may pivot the ANC towards the centre.
The real coming together of the ANC’s centrist elements and the former opposition may be the informal conversations in the corridors of power. This is proof at long last that the ANC’s better elements do in fact exist. It is clear those people are in fact grateful for a DA tie-up to temper the ANC’s more detrimental pursuits.
For example, the ANC will be aware that the attempt to nationalise the country’s private healthcare sector (NHI) is a prime reason that its support nosedived pre-election.
Instead, “let us pursue a modified version of the bill, in which we first look at improvements in public hospitals.”
An opportunity is now here to improve South Africa’s dire security situation with the ANC’s capable Senzo Mchunu as Minister of Police and the DA’s civic activist Ian Cameron as chairperson of police portfolio committee.
A third factoris what the deal means at a municipal and provincial level.
Of the three largest provinces in the country’s nine, the DA held its majority in the Western Cape.
A four-party coalition, including the ANC, the IFP and the DA, assumed governance in another – KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). The ‘garden province’ of SA now has energetic new Finance and Public Works ministers. Already, task-force teams have been engaged to take down the province’s construction mafias’ crippling growth, with the assistance of private investigators.
This a dial mover. Within a month, the provincial administration has moved from collusion in criminal syndicates to being on the citizens’ side in taking them down.
This provincial arrangement may sooner or later trickle down to the municipal level for the eThekwini circus (KwaZulu-Natal’s largest city of Durban). The centre could in time add Durban to its list of countrywide municipal turnarounds, including Cape Town, Tshwane (Pretoria) and AbaQulusi.
The playbook includes firing incompetents, demanding that the Municipal Public Accounts Committee (MPAC) oversees expenditure, and grappling with service delivery.
The speed of urban regeneration nowadays can be astounding, aided by business groups and heritage preservation groups.
The last of the large provinces – Gauteng – has seen a GNU deadlock. Convincing the ANC’s unique elements in the most populous province and its constituent municipalities to turn to the centre will be harder. The turnaround will need to be mammoth but will also offer the biggest prize for those who venture.
Previous DA attempts to govern Johannesburg municipality stumbled largely on the issue of numbers, which the ANC could in theory provide. The GNU has crossed the psychological threshold, meaning that the ANC can work with the centre.
At this point, the three major provinces and most cities would be headed by the former opposition and be at various points on the path to recovery.
In the first round of municipal by-elections post the 2024 general election, votes for stability were given to the IFP and the DA. The two gained or increased previously fragile majorities, from the bustling Newcastle to the quaint Beaufort West. Those who did not deliver were ejected.
Centrist-gains in the 2026 municipal elections offer further prospects for the former opposition to shine. South Africa’s turnaround may be a result of small marginal gains over time.
Civil society
As mentioned, easy wins for new administrations at all three levels of government can come from leveraging South Africa’s vibrant civil society.
John Endres, CEO of the Institute for Race Relations (IRR) stated last year that South Africa could pioneer the ‘lean’ state as a development model. That is one that cooperates with these non-state alternatives to government failure.
Think about an NGO that provides an app to report water quality to the municipal authorities. Think about the volunteer community watch forces that share information and assist government police to patrol the neighbourhood.
Forward
It is likely that the ANC’s downward trajectory will continue, whilst the DA will grow. By 2029, the two could be closer to parity.
If, 18 months from now, the DA realises it is not possible to effect change, it should remove itself from the agreement, and assume a looser confidence and supply arrangement in opposition.
Yet five years is a long time to turn a beachhead into a landmass. If the current leaders pull the essence of the GNU into a second term and tackle labour market reform, South Africa could finally find its way.
That would unleash the forces of the world’s most dynamic emerging market, from entrepreneurial low-cost schools to booming industries in wine and data centres.
The last month has shown that voters reward those who will help them get there.
[Image: BK Tekane]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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