South Africa’s government of national unity teetering on the brink of 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, plus the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) 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”. The GOOD party is a member of the GNU.

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 broken hearts will neither be easy nor quick.

This isn’t just a headache for President Ramaphosa & 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, once again) running to Washington to implore SA-born Elon Musk to urge his boss, President Donald Trump, to express a dim view over SA’s passing of the Expropriation of Land without Compensation Act is another example. Trump not only took a dim view. Typically, he acted accordingly, his administration declaring SA’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, the SA Communist Party, 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 must the ANC do under such trying circumstances? After the end of the recent National Working Committee meeting 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 SA’s, and in light of the pre-1994 CODESA negotiated settlement outcomes, 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 do President Ramaphosa and his ANC, the conveners of the GNU and its lead drivers, deal with such blatant undermining of the country’s foreign policy stance as the PA, ACDP and DA just did?

The PA’s deputy leader, Kenny Kunene, says being in the DA does not dissolve each participating party’s political manifesto. Yet, ideologically, some of the parties in the GNU are so diametrically opposed that it boggles the mind to picture them sitting together and thrashing out a common mission.

From the outset, it has been utterly clear that it was the ANC that wanted the GNU the most. There was an opportunity for the ANC 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 formation of the GNU wholeheartedly, and the country’s political stability has ignited a performing economy, albeit with lingering structural challenges.

In the final analysis, it looks like President 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 President Ramaphosa, the GNU is akin to what in my Tswana language we refer to as the “cow of the palace”. You are guilty if you heard it and (equally) guilty if you didn’t!

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

In my view, if there is anything that keeps President Ramaphosa and the ANC awake at night, tossing and turning, 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 Founder and Editor-in-Chief: Global South Media Network (gsmn.co.za). The views expressed are personal.