South Africa has entered a new political reality with the formation of the Government of National Unity (GNU).
The internal dynamics of the GNU will also likely, in many ways, become the key determinant of our politics for the next five years. And despite the GNU cabinet now being around a month old, there are still questions as to how it will work in practice when the big points of division come up for discussion.
With all that said, I think we do now begin to see the outlines of the strategies that the DA and ANC, in particular, will pursue against each other over the next five years.
The GNU is, at best, an uncomfortable alliance between its biggest members – the DA and ANC – and at worst, an incoherent mess. The DA and ANC, despite the claims of some commentators, really don’t see eye-to-eye on much. The ANC is for BEE as a central pillar of its economic policy, the DA is against it. The ANC writes grand sectoral master plans for each industry, the DA doesn’t want to micromanage industrial sectors. In foreign policy the DA is pro-Western, the ANC is anti-Western. The DA favours decentralization; the ANC is obsessed with centralizing power.
Despite these differences, the parties are now tied together closely in their fates.
Odd position
The DA finds itself in the odd position of trying to be an opposition party at the same time as it is trying to be an ally in a coalition government. The DA is talking up unity, and its ministers are vowing to work closely with all stake holders, even long-time enemies like SADTU. At the same time, the DA parliamentary caucus members have been told to hold government to account and essentially continue as they did before the GNU. The party says it will continue to pursue some court cases against the ANC .
With the balance of power in cabinet being tilted strongly in the ANC’s favour, the DA will have to be cunning if it wants to stay in the GNU and at the same time improve its position in the next election. Whilst the DA’s ability to get its own policies implemented is limited, it does have the ability to outshine the ANC in performance and communications, something the ANC is apparently already complaining about.
The ANC, for its part, not only holds the bulk of cabinet, but also controls the civil service. It still enjoys support for its policies from many of the country’s intelligentsia, who may have soured on the party but still broadly support its policy platform. From this position one could see the DA ministers unable to differentiate themselves, and essentially being made to implement ANC policy, especially if the ANC plays off the smaller parties against the DA.
And even as the ANC has committed itself to working with its partners in the GNU, some of its factions decry the alliance with the DA, describing it as the enemy and accusing the ANC of “selling out”.
Radical elements
If the DA is wise, it will try to split the ANC off from its more radical elements on the far left, by supporting Ramaphosa and trying to be seen as a useful ally. This would essentially divide the ANC into a more pragmatic social democratic party on one side, and a more revolutionary party which shares more with the EFF and MK on the other. At the same time, the DA should attempt with its cabinet posts to outshine the ANC whilst avoiding too much direct conflict, essentially positioning itself as the future senior partner in an alliance between the more centrist parties.
At the same time as it holds the ANC’s leadership close, it will have to keep its parliamentary caucus active and critical of government failures, so that it is not seen to be backing ANC policy and failure. This will need a delicate act of balancing.
Conversely, the ANC will, if it is clever, try to divide the DA’s parliamentary caucus and its ministerial team. It might paint the caucus as “unhelpful” and “unconstructive”. ANC-aligned civil servants would be key to this, flattering DA ministers and shielding them from criticism from their own colleagues in caucus. At the same time, the ANC will try to get the DA members to go along with its major policy plans such as EWC, BEE, NHI, and others, to taint them among their own supporters who will likely not forgive the DA for betraying its manifesto.
They could do this by painting DA opposition to these policies as “obstructionist”, and it could play the DA off against MK and the EFF, while threatening it with an alliance with those parties if the DA doesn’t submit. The ANC could also exploit the DA’s internal divisions on issues such as Israel-Palestine, where the party is fiercely divided.
Each with a knife
The two parties are now engaged in a political tango of death. Imagine two dancers performing a tango, holding each other very close, each with a knife held to the other’s back, waiting for the opportunity to strike.
The stakes for the GNU could not be higher, and depending on how the parties play it when the music stops, there might only be one dancer left standing.
[Image: Brigitte Werner from Pixabay]
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