Though already in operation for about six months, the Government of National Unity (GNU) is still the focus of speculation about its sustainability or longevity.
Many sceptics cannot see a long-term partnership between the ANC and DA. Moreover, ideological critics dispute the notion of a national unity government, because of the EFF and MK’s absence from it.
The DA’s presence is for them also an anathema.
Added to it South Africans are already more familiar with coalition governments since the 2016 local government election but few of them are enthusiastic about the concept. The GNU therefore has a serious challenge ahead of it.
The GNU concept is caught in different political realities. President Ramaphosa, the DA, Patriotic Alliance, and Freedom Front Plus are the GNU’s most vocal supporters. Other partners like the IFP, UDM, PAC and al-Jamaah are less visible but still very much inside the GNU camp.
The biggest exception is the ANC which is most divided on the GNU – take for example the ANC’s ministers who are defending the GNU in comparison with the stance of Panyaza Lesufi who is supporting it vocally but not acting in accordance with it.
The most critical voice against the GNU is the social media and the public who do not give much of a chance for the coalition and see the beginning of its end in most of the public exchanges between ministers or party leaders.
What is the GNU’s doom-and-gloom about?
Very prominent are the fistfights between Helen Zille and Fikile Mbalula.
Their positions in the parties are an important part of the explanation. They are in charge of the secretariats of the DA and ANC and function outside parliament and government.
Their main responsibilities are to keep their parties in good shape, keep their party identities strong, keep their party supporters close to them and take responsibility for the organizational well-being of their parties.
Their first responsibilities are therefore their parties and not the coalition. They must also prepare for the 2026 local government election. If it happens that they contest each other in public, it represents the fact that the ANC and DA are not the same and don’t have the same party policies even though they are developing common government policies.
What they are saying is therefore not a barometer of the GNU’s health. One has to listen to President Ramaphosa, John Steenhuisen, Gayton Mackenzie or other ministers for such indications but not to Zille or Mbalula.
Most of the GNU’s potential problematic areas are policy issues, such as the BELA Act, international relations issues or the National Health Insurance. Other areas of potential concern are provincial and local governments.
The ANC also has to contend with criticism from the Left. It can be reduced to two points.
The first criticism is that the GNU is not a truly unity government, because it excludes MK, the EFF, Azapo and others.
The emphasis is therefore on black unity as articulated by the progressive caucus, though the PAC, UDM and al-Jamaa broke ranks and joined the GNU.
A new obstacle in this contention is that even the MKP and EFF are drifting apart, which makes unity a greater challenge and unlikely for the foreseeable future.
The second point against the ANC is the accusation that it has become too neo-liberal or even conservative.
The accusation is that its economic policies, approach to state-owned enterprises and private-public partnerships are radical deviations from its Freedom Charter tradition.
The critics in this camp include the SACP which decided recently that it intends to contend the 2026 local government elections on its own and not with the ANC.
The ANC’s conservatism is not only in economic terms but it is also accused of cooperating with racists, apartheid supporters and parties that do not support transformation. The ANC’s commitment to societal liberation is therefore challenged.
In summary, the challenge to the GNU is mainly an ideological one and not whether it can function as a government institution.
What is a realistic expectation of what the GNU can do and what are the considerations to take into account when judging its performance and stability?
The first point is that the GNU should be approached in terms of the dynamics of a coalition – not an ordinary one but an unusually large one. Coalitions are normally as small as possible in order to reach the 50%+1 threshold. The South African one is much larger (about 70%) and therefore it is much more difficult to manage.
The second point is that the parties in a coalition are per definition interdependent of each other.
They have to cooperate because no one has an absolute majority and can therefore function on its own. In the current situation, this interdependence must be qualified, because more than one option of partnerships is available.
The common factor in all of them is the ANC. The ANC’s options are: a coalition with either the DA or the MKP. The EFF on its own is too small, while all the other small parties are collectively also too small to constitute a coalition with the ANC.
The third point is that coalitions are seldom ideologically coherent; they are often more pragmatic.
Such pragmatism is in the form of consensus policies which are not in the first instance determined by ideological assumptions. Instances of divergence between coalition partners are often present and many understand them as manifestations of instability or incompatibility.
Policies that might appear to be ideologically contradictory (such as sections of the BELA Act) do not necessarily cause coalitions to collapse if their main emphasis is on the consensus elements of such a policy.
Such situations also depend on a strong centre in the coalition as well as effective dispute-resolution mechanisms. What kept the GNU together so far is the optimism and commitment of the national parties’ leaders.
Fourthly, a coalition’s longevity is never guaranteed.
The latest pertinent case of a collapse is the German coalition. In situations where a coalition has collapsed and there are no other viable options, the only option is to call a new national election which could, ideally, result in a new party-political landscape.
In South Africa, such an option is at the moment not possible, because section 50(1) of the Constitution determines that a new election can happen only three years after the previous one: therefore, after May 2027. In the absence of such an option, the DA has no other option but to participate in the GNU with the ANC or to become an opposition party. Without the DA as a partner, the ANC will have only one option and that is the MKP.
If that is not viable for the ANC, then only one scenario remains: that the ANC and DA have to resolve their issues and cooperate.
Such a scenario will depend on many factors: a well-functioning dispute resolution mechanism, personal trust amongst coalition members, genuine sharing of government power, and underplaying individual party interests but not denying that overt party activities are regarded as legitimate for coalition partners.
Finally, the future of the GNU will depend much on the ANC’s internal politics and especially the future of President Ramaphosa.
His successor as ANC President in 2027 will have to be a pro-GNU figure. The DA does not have the same impact on the future of the GNU, because the MKP is a potential alternative for them.
Given the party’s realization that they do not have absolute veto power on a national coalition, the DA has to protect its role in it by presenting its different views but not forcing an absolute showdown on it.
Creating dialogue processes, which President Ramaphosa so far accepted as a resolution mechanism, appears to be the preferred approach at the moment.
**Prof Dirk Kotzé, Department of Political Sciences, Unisa.
***The views here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media and IOL.
IOL Opinion