Political turmoil: South Africa's GNU faces potential collapse

BY all accounts, South Africa’s conundrum that is the Government of National Unity (GNU) will likely fester into a debilitating wound before it gets healed anytime soon.

The revelation of the DA and Patriotic Alliance (PA), two of the mainstays of the GNU, undertaking what looks like a clandestine trip to Israel ought to shake the substance that has kept the unique ruling alliance together since the outcome of the May 2024 elections, in which no single party garnered an outright majority.

There are simply more questions than answers in the wake of the revelation made by the GOOD party about the trip to what the PA’s national spokesperson Steve Motale refers to in a media statement as a “trip to the Holy Land”.

Clearly, if the fanfare with which President Cyril Ramaphosa managed to roll out the GNU is anything to go by, the honeymoon must be over, even to the blind loyalists.

The recent refusal by the DA to support the budget vote in Parliament was yet another example of relations within the GNU going pear-shaped. The DA’s abstention from endorsing the ANC-led budget vote left Luthuli House seething with undisguised anger. Led by the ANC’s Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula, the chorus of condemnation of the DA was telling, and mending of broken hearts will neither be easy nor quick.

This isn’t just a headache for Ramaphosa and Co. It is a major political dilemma of the moment. It is compounded by the separate shenanigans that are so undesirable. AfriForum et al, (and here include the DA, one again), running to Washington to implore SA-born Elon Musk to urge his boss, President Donald Trump, to express a dim view over South Africa’s passing of the Expropriation of Land without Compensation Act, is another example.

Trump not only took a dim view. Typically, he acted accordingly, declaring South Africa’s Ambassador to the US, Ebrahim Rasool, persona non grata.

Many outside of the GNU, such as the influential EFF of Julius Malema and the ANC’s key alliance partner, SA Communist Party (SACP), have called for heads to roll. The outspoken leader of the SACP, Solly Mapaila, wants the DA to be expelled from the GNU. He’s never been in support of the ANC jumping into bed with the lineage of the former colonisers, the DA, and his public outbursts have served as evidence of the deep-seated apprehension of the GNU.

The question — the elephant in the room — is: What does the ANC do under such trying circumstances? After the end of the recent National Working Committee of the ANC, it became apparent that the DA’s continued affiliation with the GNU is a very divisive factor within the former liberation movement circles. Many feel that the GNU ought to haul AfriForum and its kindred before the courts on charges as serious as treason.

But in a constitutional democracy such as South Africa’s, and in light of the pre-1994 Codesa negotiated settlement, it is easier said than done.

The GNU itself was always going to be a major headache to operate, a migraine, if you will. How then does Ramaphosa and his ANC, the conveners of the GNU and its drivers, deal with such blatant undermining of the country’s foreign policy stance as the PA and DA just did?

The PA’s deputy leader, Kenney Kunene, says being in the DA does not dissolve each participating party’s political manifesto. Yet ideologically some of the parties are so diametrically opposed it boggles the mind that they can even find a common ground on anything.

From the outset, it has been utterly clear that it was the ANC that wanted the GNU the most. There was an opportunity to forge a minority coalition with the leftist parties, such as the EFF and former President Jacob Zuma’s MK Party, but they chose not to. The markets had embraced the GNU wholeheartedly, and the country’s political stability has ignited a performing economy, albeit with structural challenges.

In the final analysis, it looks as if Ramaphosa will be wrong if he tackles the errant members of the GNU. But then again, who defines errant behaviour? Thus, to the ANC and Ramaphosa, the GNU is akin to what in my Tswana language we refer to as the “king’s cow”. You are guilty if you herd it, and (equally) guilty if you don’t!

The GNU arrangement is a potpourri of political sentiments that, even at prima facie glance, do not gel as a group. After all, the potpourri scent is always short-lived, although in politics miracles do happen, and South Africa’s GNU is no exception.

In my view, if there is anything that keeps Ramaphosa or the ANC awake at night it must be the GNU.

Yet why they don’t file for divorce is surely another case study for political science studies. Blurry as it may seem, the intersection of politics and business — that reprehensible zone for communists and dyed-in-the-wool socialists — could well be the glue holding the GNU together. Only time will tell.

* Abbey Makoe is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Global South Media Network (gsmn.co.za). The views expressed are personal.

** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, Independent Media, or IOL.