Prior to the election, there was a great deal of excited discussion about what a government would look like should the ANC be unable to muster more than half the votes cast. For the first time, the idea of an arrangement between the ANC and Democratic Alliance was seriously entertained. For those attracted to this option, the appeal was all about putting “petty politics” aside. Politicians needed to act “for the good of the country”. Perhaps surprisingly, the coalition outcome – the Government of National Unity (GNU) – came to pass.
The big thing over the past week has been the 100-day mark of the GNU. This waypoint is a nice, symmetrical node on which to assess the progress of an incoming administration. It’s long enough to allow for the incumbents to hit a stride, and to signal vitality and idealism – or their absence.
For a country fed on a buffet of bad news, something positive to chew on would be most welcome: that these 100 days constitute the first time since 1994 that the ANC has not commanded a majority, and the first time in generations that a coalition government has taken power.
Much of the substance – or lack thereof – of the first 100 days has been covered either by my colleagues or in the broader media. For my part, the achievements have been interesting but limited. The very establishment of the GNU (not my choice, but now a reality) was itself a success, given the long-standing animosity between the ANC and DA. They have been able to stitch together the rudiments of a common agenda. Although the GNU’s Statement of Intent doesn’t qualify as a plan or a programme, it does set out some general parameters and an overall direction – which is not particularly contentious and so is good enough for an “in principle” buy-in. For me, the key provisions were for those requiring Constitutional governance (respect for the Constitution “in its entirety”), demanding a professional civil service, and prioritising economic growth.
There have been some visible governance wins, such as clearing backlogs at Home Affairs – something we know because Minister Leon Schreiber has made a point of telling us, often. Whether or not these are attributable to a new crop of ministers is less important than the narrative that they can carry, that the GNU is getting things working. Indeed, this is precisely what President Ramaphosa has been punting in the US, and what Deputy President Mashatile has been doing in the UK.
The currency and the JSE have responded positively to all this, and the idea that politicians – at least those in the rational centre – have seemingly been able to “put aside petty politics for the good of the country”.
That said, 100 days is a short period in the five-year life of a government. It remains to be seen whether this arrangement can weather the inevitable disagreements that will arise from trying to turn the direction sentiment into actual policy. They may be able to agree on the imperative of growth, but there remains a vast chasm between the market-oriented, private-sector led approach favoured by the DA and the dirigiste view that looms large within the ANC.
And for what it’s worth, I doubt some participants in the GNU – the Pan-Africanist Congress and Al-Jam’ah come to mind – are especially committed to constitutional governance, and not under the Constitution we have.
But I think that the past 100 days have exposed something more immediate and perhaps more damaging.
It’s redundant to state that the GNU represents something unprecedented. While coalition governments are not new, this has been forced on the ANC by the necessity of losing its national majority, and is – for the erstwhile opposition – not driven by a mutual suspicion of the ANC.
The existential question for the endurance – let alone the success of the GNU – is whether they can make this model work.
It’s necessary to take a step back and recall that in the run-up to the election, much of the commentary about prospective coalitions took aim at the DA for ruling out (sort of) a coalition with the ANC. To its critics, this was selfish and short-sighted, “petty politics” that the country could not afford. Here it needed to ante up “for the good of the country”. Melanie Verwoerd took this future, telling the DA that it owed this to the country, and advising the DA not to expect too much in terms of positions and influence.
Embedded in this was an unspoken note of menace: unless the DA prostrated itself before the ANC, the latter would opt for a ruinous deal with the Economic Freedom Fighters (or later the uMkhonto we Sizwe Party). An interesting thought, suggesting that power is the ANC’s by right – one way or another – and that whether this is “for the good of the country” or not was not a matter of great import to it, nor were those hectoring the DA seemingly concerned about what this said about the ANC as a coalition partner.
At issue in all coalitions is whether they work for all their participants. Whether or not an arrangement functions “for the good of the country” or “for the good of the people” runs along with the question of whether the arrangement works for the parties involved. This is the nature of democracy, or more accurately, democratic pluralism. Parties represent constituencies whose interests are on various matters not going to be aligned with one another – that is legitimate and positive. “The good of the country” (and even more so, “the good of the people”) is a slippery, relational idea, and in a democracy, it is always the subject of negotiation and qualification.
Whether the parties that have committed themselves to the coalition can claim benefits for those constituencies is an existential question. Having entered government along with erstwhile opponents, they risk repelling some of their supporters. They lose the freedom to criticise and take on responsibility for decisions they may not ideally have made.
In South Africa, parties to the GNU face these risks in a heightened form. For the ANC, it must explain that it compromised its revolutionary agenda to accommodate parties it had demonised as representing recalcitrant racists and venal capitalists. For the DA, it has extended a lifeline to the party of decrepit 1960s Cold War ideology, incompetence, corruption and state capture.
Each party will need to be able to make a strong case to its supporters that entering the coalition was to their benefit. Since there are numerous examples worldwide of parties being punished by their supporters for ill-fated participation in coalitions, this is something that all members of the GNU – particularly the DA – will be wary of.
In other words, it’s in the interests of the durability of the coalition to ensure that each of its partners is able to deliver wins to its constituency. On this, I am concerned.
For all the chastisement that the DA received prior to the vote for expressing reluctance to work with the ANC, it was ultimately willing to do so, on the principle that cooperating with a deeply compromised ANC would be preferable (“for the good of the country”) to seeing that deeply compromised ANC team up with the EFF and MK. The latter may well have meant the effective end of constitutional governance. (Aside: it’s also the option that one of South Africa’s great anti-corruption icons Thuli Madonsela promoted.)
It has done so despite considerable provocation from the ANC. Having negotiated the outlines of a deal, the DA helped to the ANC to put President Ramaphosa back into office, and to fill other key positions. Footage of Mike Moriarty seconding the nomination of Panyaza Lesufi for Gauteng premier is something I doubt I’ll ever forget.
But since at this point power passed from the negotiating table between political parties to state offices, all bets were essentially off, and all that the DA – and for that matter, all others outside the ANC – relied on was the honour and goodwill of those newly appointed incumbents.
My assessment is that what has followed from the presidential and premiers’ offices has been fundamentally the actions of party office bearers dealing with their opponents rather than statesmen dealing with their partners. The DA was shortchanged in the assignment of cabinet positions, although it should be noted that it was assigned some significant portfolios. (Perceptive readers will recall that President Ramaphosa unwittingly exposed his thinking about appointments being a mechanism for political inclusion rather than governance, when he told the world that it had not been possible to reduce the size of the cabinet.)
In Gauteng, Premier Lesufi, who has never made any secret of his loathing for the DA, took the latter’s support for his premiership and engineered a nominal offer to the DA on the Provincial Executive Council that they were bound to refuse.
Shortly thereafter, the ANC proceeded to go after Tshwane mayor Cilliers Brink, an endeavour in which they recently succeeded, with the support of Action SA. The provincial ANC releases a steady stream of invective against the DA, so in South Africa’s economic heart, there is little to differentiate the relationship between the ANC and DA pre-election from that post-election.
Perhaps most revealing has been the steaming ahead of the policy agenda. The keystone event here was the signing into law on 13 September of the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act. This is a highly contentious piece of legislation, and highlights a clear split in philosophy between the ANC and DA. For the ANC, it reflects a statist orientation, where authorities can intervene against errant and ideologically unpalatable school administrations; language policy – its record has shown – is seen as a proxy for racism. For the DA, it’s about giving citizens the latitude to live their lives and make decisions that are right for them, something of great importance to its middle-class supporters who underwrite much of the state from which they receive very little benefit. Language is an important cultural matter, and one guaranteed as a constitutional entitlement. It’s a wide chasm to bridge.
But this is firmly within the remit of a DA minister; she declined to attend the signing ceremony. Panyaza Lesufi – no longer an education MEC – was there grinning like a Cheshire cat. Or perhaps a hyena. One can guess where this is heading.
The point is that this is an issue on which the President should have deferred to the minister, and to the party she heads – at the very least reopening it for consultations before signing, rather than the three months suspension of a couple of clauses. Why? Because this is an opportunity to demonstrate that the GNU is in fact a partnership among diverse political parties, and not colloquium assembled at the behest of a benevolent ANC. It would signal to the various outside interests that have backed the GNU that it is a serious proposition – and that the ANC has accepted it is not the hegemon with an entitlement to rule.
And it would demonstrate, critically, that there are real benefits for the DA to being inside the GNU, rather than on the opposition benches, where it built its brand. It would be a visible win for the DA.
It seems to me that the ANC has simply not adjusted its mental framework from seeing the DA as its opponent (or its enemy), and seeing it as a partner in government. Seeking to present it as subordinate and denying it influence on matters like the BELA Act may play well to its sense of its historic mission and to interests like those championed in the desperately fractious party by Premier Lesufi, but they are damaging to the prospects of the GNU in the long run. And with it, to the “good of the country”.
I’d add for the Ramphosa-philes that he should bear particular personal responsibility for this. The presidency has enormous powers concentrated within it – a flaw in my view – and he must carry the can for how this has been used. It should not be forgotten that President Ramaphosa’s supposed skills as a negotiator were not only (and probably not even primarily) about a unique ability to find common ground with opponents, but to deliver the results his party wanted. In my estimation, his loyalties are foremost to his party, and his tenure as president has been largely about using the state to run the ANC. Being able to use an avuncular personality, unspecified assurances and kicking concerns down the road have been valuable assets in dealing with those outside the party orbit. I suspect this is essentially the strategy he’s pursuing within the GNU, probably in the hope that he can lead a moderately successful GNU through its term, with the ANC’s policy agenda and control of the state intact.
I expect more of this, with the National Health Insurance being an obvious policy and ideological point of tension. Indeed, Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi has declared that the National Health Insurance programme is sacrosanct and will go through even if it means the collapse of the GNU (Ramaphosa has promised to “talk” about the issue).
A dispute mechanism has been established, though just how effective it is – whether it is a genuine forum for negotiation, or a toy telephone – remains to be seen. Once again, the President’s penchant for endless institution-forming and discussion gives grounds for scepticism.
So, what does this indicate for the future? The dangers for the DA are obvious: the appearance of impotent co-option and the sense of betrayal by its voters. But they exist equally for the ANC, albeit more subtly. If indeed, this is the game the ANC is playing, there is simply no prospect of a significant turnaround. Enthusiasm for the “GNU Dawn” will prove as misplaced as that for the “New Dawn”. For President Ramaphosa, this will be politically fatal, and he will be remembered as South Africa’s great pretender, a smooth talker whose charm concealed nothing of substance because there was nothing of substance to conceal.
He will also find that he has brought very little for his party. The accumulated weight of misgovernance and ideological obsession has brought South Africa to its crisis point. It is unlikely that the mere neutralisation of a clutch of opposition parties will be enough to win back its fading popular appeal. It too will be judged harshly for the failure of the GNU.
Paradoxically, this means that the DA and ANC actually now need each other for their individual prospects. The ANC has clearly not understood this and perhaps some in the DA have not properly recognised it either. And certainly, many of the commentators and businesspeople who hoped for this arrangement, wagged their fingers at those opposing it, and cheered for it when it came into being, do not seem to understand this. I suspect there is a replay of the “Cyril has got this” optimism that was current when the President was staking a lot (not least our economic future) on Expropriation without Compensation – the feeling that while this is a bad idea, and we don’t understand what’s going on, well, “Cyril” has it all worked out. That wasn’t a convincing approach then, and it isn’t viable now.
The time for GNU optimism is past, and attention must be given to making it work. This means correctly orienting on all sides the politics – the “petty politics” – which is ultimately central to whether this all works for the “good of the country.”
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