As the ANC holds celebrations to commemorate a hundred days since the formation of the Government of National Unity, there’s mixed feelings about whether the coalition is holding as well as whether it was really serving the people of South Africa.
Just a little over a week ago, a key player in the coalition, the Democratic Alliance, failed in a bid to replicate the arrangement in hung municipalities, a move that would have seen the party almost become the ANC’s exclusive ally while keeping the entire left out.
The failure to secure a deal with the ANC resulted in the removal of Celliers Brink as the Mayor of the City of Tshwane sparking all manner of threats from the DA’s Chairperson of Federal Council Helen Zille who announced the party will withdraw from talks that were meant to ” stabilise” municipalities City of Ekurhuleni and Nelson Mandela Bay which the ANC is currently governing through coalitions that includes parties such as the EFF, African Transformation Movement and African Independent Congress as well as local municipalities in various provinces.
The ANC finds itself being at the centre of the contestation as the right and the left seek to push each other out with both sides seeking an exclusive relationship with the ANC.
“I told the president when I met with him that you don’t need the DA. It’s fine if you don’t want the EFF in your cabinet but you’re guaranteed our vote. You could just gather the smaller parties, PAC with the little votes they have, mapantiti ( Patriotic Alliance) and Action SA among others then form a government that can also count on the EFF for support but clearly he has always wanted to work with the DA,” said Malema adding the GNU was the worst thing that could happen to South Africa.
Malema’s sentiments are shared by the South African Communist Party, an ally of the ANC in the so-called Tripartite Alliance which described the arrangement with the DA and Freedom Front + as a “sell out” move.
The SACP on Sunday it had rejected the ANC’s invitation to the commemoration ceremony in an unprecedented move that is likely to stir more tension in the alliance and make things awkward for its members who are deployed in the GNU which includes the likes of Minister of Science Blade Ndzimande, Deputy ministers of justice as well as police Andre Nel and Polly Boshielo who are all members of the party’s Central Committee, the highest decision making structure in between conferences.
“We have been invited by the ANC to the 100 days of the GNU celebrations tomorrow, we have rejected the invitation. We will not be going, albeit it’s been laced together with thanking the people who voted for the African National Congress for which we were in the campaign. It feels sad, but we will not be going as a communist party,” said SACP General Secretary Solly Mapaila.
Mapaila has been giving rolling interviews to media outlets during which he rubbished the GNU calling on history to judge the current ANC leadership harshly.
“Their agenda was clear: to remove the ANC from the government. How can we, after the elections, embrace these parties – specifically the DA – and call it a “return to normal” in a “democracy”? This is not normal for us. We will not embrace the DA, and we reject any alliance and marriage with it and the class forces of monopoly capital it represents. The DA’s history is rooted in the beneficiaries of apartheid, and it continues to serve their interests today, including in education, among others,” said Mapaila.
Just like the EFF and Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto Wesizwe Party, the SACP has vowed to oppose the GNU at every turn to make sure it’s crushed before it gains shape.
Well-being economists, professor Talita Greyling from the University of Johannesburg and Dr Stephanié Rossouw from the Auckland University of Technology, said an indicator tool they developed pointed to widespread happiness about the GNU, a view reiterated by the government itself as well as several political analysts but rejected by parties on the left.
On Thursday EFF leader Julius Malema briefed the media in Johannesburg and dismissed the assertion that South Africans were happy with GNU arguing the economy was shedding jobs rapidly under the coalition government.
“So what I’m talking about, there’s nothing that a black child and a black man can show and say I got this because of government of national unity. Drip is closing down today, under GNU so what are you talking about. Telkom is retrenching, Serithi ( mining company) is retrenching and we are told people are happy,” said Malema.
Ordinary people on the streets of Johannesburg expressed mixed feelings about the GNU.
“It’s a sellout position. There’s nothing tactical about working with the DA. You see now the same DA is fighting NHI and BELA Bill,” said a man who is a civil servant and proclaims himself an activist of the ANC.
Another one said he was happy with the GNU because it was going to end corruption. “ whites are going to deal with them if they steal like they have been doing. John Steenhuisen is supervising them now because they are thieves,” he said.
A young graduate said the GNU gave her hope of finally getting a job after being unemployed since graduating five years ago. “we want jobs. I am almost 30 years and I don’t even have tax number so GNU gives me hope that I will get something eventually,” she said.
Another woman, a Zimbabwean national expressed apprehension with the coalition government stating she feared it could carry out mass deportation.
“We are all very scared seeing what they have been doing over the past couple of weeks, you’ve seen them, now some of my brothers and sisters are told by the company that they need to get papers, passport, bank account and others or else they’ll lose their jobs, it’s sad, you can’t just go to companies and force them to fire us, she said.
ANC Secretary General Fikile Mbalula has been leading the defence brigade of the GNU threatening disciplinary action against ANC members who spoke ill of the coalition.
Mbalula spoke to television news channel eNCA on Sunday where he reiterated his intention to have the ANC’s Gauteng chairperson Panyaza Lesufi hauled before a disciplinary hearing for allegedly endorsing Mapaila’s criticism of the coalition.
Lesufi has been singled out as the instigator of anti-GNU sentiment by the Democratic Alliance which wrote to the ANC Secretary General urging him to take action against Lesufi and to have Brink re-elected as Tshwane Mayor.
So I call him and I say, pick up these things. So I call him and I say, Don’t behave like Solly Mapaila who is the SACP, General Secretary, you are a leader and we are in the ANC, we are in GNU, we discussed and agreed with it. And then there are these insinuations. I give you a chance come to the ANC, because what you are doing borders on Ill discipline, breaking the constitution of the ANC and bringing it into disrepute. Explain yourself. I’ve given him that platform, called him to the officials. He explained himself for less than five minutes, and it’s sorted now. There was never an issue to be sorted. He explained himself, and his explanations were accepted by all of us, and then we left him to go. But if he thinks he will run a campaign against the Secretary General of the ANC, he must mind his steps, because we will act. We will never, we will never tolerate rougueness in the organization that we will never allow Are you!, said an agitated Mbalula.
Lesufi excluded the DA from his provincial cabinet following failed talks leading to him being seen as a rebel of sorts, a charge he has denied repeatedly.
Independent Political analyst Melusi Ncala said he did not think the coalition was solid arguing it was vulnerable as it was being opposed from within the ANC’s own ranks and stating tension will most probably rise in just under two years of the GNU’s existence as jostling for position intensively ahead of the party’s elective conference in 2027 which is expected to have President Cyril Ramaphosa replaced with a new leader.
“I believe that the casatu event is perhaps an indication of the growing fractures within this already poorly consent conceptualized GNU, right and you already have another partner of the tripartite Alliance, the South African Communist Party, making other noises, and perhaps now COSATU is jostling for its position in shaping the post GNU government, said Ncala of fierce anti GNU made at the recent Cosatu march against unemployment and what it calls “economic crisis”.
because at the moment, contrary to what people are being told, the grand coalition is not really holding. There are internal strifes that are rupturing and basically leading to the collapse of this thing. So it’s a matter of when, as opposed to of if it will happen, I suspect perhaps another 18 months to 24 months at best, that President Cyril Ramaphosa can keep this going, because this is going to intensify,” he said.
The ANC has consistently defended the GNU and argued it has already brought much needed investor confidence and creating jobs.
Ramaphosa has so far appeared calm and focused going on about his job and currently has to decide if to implement the NHI and BELA Bill in full or make concessions for DA, Freedom Front +, Afri-Forum and trade union Solidarity who have approached him to object against sections of both laws.
While Ramaphosa said he was to apply his mind about the contested parts of the bills, his decision to not include them when he signed both into law is unprecedented.
He has listed among his achievements the very formation of the GNU.
“You come at a time after our elections, when the ANC invited nine parties to be part of a government of national unity, where we sought to unite these parties so that we can form a government that will bring stability to South Africa. A government that is leading the process of building an economy that is inclusive for our people, a government that is enhancing good governance in the country, the government that is committed to creating jobs, a government that is committed to Ensuring that the people of South Africa have a better life almost 100 days in government, and so far, the government, much as it has 10 parties, is working extremely well and has been broadly accepted by the people of South Africa And, by the international community as well,” said Ramaphosa to a high level delegation of the Central Committee and Politburo of the Communist Party of Vietnam that was visiting the ANC in Johannesburg and its Deputy General Secretary.
The former liberation movement now governs what is a one party state Vietnam.