BNC#7: RW Johnson – A rational perspective on the GNU, its critics and its future

Can the GNU sustain itself until 2029, or will internal ANC power struggles determine its fate?

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24 Mar 2025, 6:47 pm

At the seventh BizNews Conference BNC#7 in Hermanus, renowned political scientist and prolific BizNews contributor RW Johnson delivered a thought-provoking keynote on South Africa's Government of National Unity (GNU). He dissected the deep divide between ANC activists and the party's broader voter base, revealing surprising polling data that shows public support for the GNU despite fierce criticism from within ANC ranks. Johnson also explored the fading influence of the Left, the EFF's decline, and the critical role of business in shaping the ANC's future leadership battle. Can the GNU sustain itself until 2029, or will internal ANC power struggles determine its fate?

In a lively Q&A session after his keynote speech, RW Johnson sat down with BizNews founder Alec Hogg to tackle topics ranging from political funding scandals to the ANC's precarious financial situation and South Africa's international entanglements. Johnson discussed the influence of foreign money on local politics, the ANC's alleged funding ties to Iran, and the fading power of the SACP. He also dissected the challenges of breaking patronage politics, the role of intelligence agencies in exposing corruption, and the GNU's uncertain future beyond 2027. Could economic performance determine its survival, or will ANC infighting bring it down first?

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Read RW Johnson's speech in full ___STEADY_PAYWALL___

The GNU, its critics and its future

By RW Johnson

(This was a talk given to the BizNews conference in Hermanus on 12 March 2025.)

There continues to be a good deal of sniping at the government of national unity (GNU) by black political activists claiming that the government represents a sell-out to white interests by Ramaphosa. Some insist that the exclusion from power of the EFF and MKP only occurred because of pressure from party funders. The SACP has termed the government an act of "class suicide" but overwhelmingly the criticism is couched in racial terms – that it is a sell-out to the whites. This critical opinion is so widely expressed that there is some possibility that it may be thought to be a majority view. Indeed, Blade Nzimande has told us that "just about everyone" in the ANC is opposed to the GNU". But that is not true.

Proof of this came on 2 October 2024, four months after the formation of the GNU, when a Social Research Foundation poll found that 60% of respondents thought the GNU was doing well. By 60% to 28% they thought the ANC was doing well in government (a margin of 32%) and by the much wider margin of 46%, 66% to 20%, they thought the DA was doing well in the GNU. Indeed, this highly favourable impression had caused both the ANC and DA to gain 4%-5% in their poll ratings. At the same time the anti-GNU parties had fallen: the EFF from 9.5% to 6% and the MKP from 14.5% to 12%. On the face of it there has been a straight transfer of opinion from anti-GNU to pro-GNU.

These findings were essentially confirmed by a survey conducted by the Institute of Race Relations a few weeks later. By 63% to 29% respondents preferred the GNU to the preceding ANC-only government. Only 27% opted for an ANC-EFF-MKP coalition government compared to 52% for the GNU. No less than 66% of respondents thought the GNU would last until the next election in 2029. 55% disapproved of the "Progressive Caucus" (EFF + MKP etc) against only 34% who approved. Moreover, these views were accompanied by centrist opinions on other subjects: 76% thought that merit should be the only basis for appointment to jobs – no illusions there about equity employment, let alone demographic representation. 87% agreed that "the other races need each other for SA to prosper" and 67% thought that politicians talked about racism and colonialism merely in order to find excuses for their own failures.

So why are ANC activists so opposed to the GNU ?

Yet the prevalence of anti-GNU sentiments among ANC activists is clear: whenever you read an article about politics in the press or hear activists talking, this comes across loud and clear. Indeed, the ANC Secretary-General, Fikile Mbabula, says "the ANC pretty much hates the GNU". Of course, in his position he mixes only with activists.

The sociological gap between ANC activists and its mass following is noteworthy: it is far wider than in any normal party. For thirty years in exile the ANC consisted solely of activists – and it was a closed world of a few thousand people. The organisation became habituated to speaking only to activists and to regarding them as the whole of the movement. To be sure, back in South Africa the UDF was launched as effectively an ANC front organisation in 1983 (though it denied it was an ANC front all the way to 1990 when it suddenly abolished itself in favour of the ANC, thus admitting that it had been a front).

To a considerable degree the habit of ANC leaders talking only to the activists remained even after 1990 when the ANC returned home. For the exiles easily took over the party leadership and, as if by magic, acquired a mass following overnight. Normally such a following would have to be built up over years by a long hard, slogging organisational effort but for the exiles (and the former Robben Islanders) none of that was necessary – the movement just volunteered itself.

So the leadership continued to relate almost entirely to activists, as if only they existed. Hence the divide between activists and mass supporters is wider than in any normal party and the activist world remains a closed circle. It was very striking in 2024 that the ANC leadership continued up to the last moment to insist that it was going to win a large majority. Its rallies were well attended so the leadership felt confident that its activists were still with it and it simply didn't know or believe that large chunks of its mass following had fallen away.

The key point to grasp is that the 2024 elections were an absolute disaster for ANC activists. There was a huge loss of parliamentary and provincial seats, which meant large numbers of people suddenly without salaries, expense accounts and the multiple opportunities for corruption that office-bearing brings. Moreover, the ANC's large loss of votes will have had a much wider fall-out. It was, for example, suddenly a lot less attractive for companies or NGOs to appoint ANC figures to one's board of directors or trustees. If nothing succeeds like success, the same is true in reverse of failure….

Of course, ANC activists are the group most affected by ANC propaganda and ideology – and accordingly more likely to react in ideological terms. But the ANC is a patronage-based party and after the election suddenly patronage was in very short supply. This in turn intensified the competition for the jobs and opportunities that remained – making life a lot more uncomfortable for everybody. On top of that, of course, the ANC lost power in KwaZulu-Natal and its thousands of municipal councillors realised that many of them were likely to lose their seats in 2026. All of which meant that the GNU was easily the worst news that ANC activists had had since 1994, so naturally they hated the GNU. Their new dependence on the DA's support summed up just how horrid was the new electoral outcome. But the opinions of activists and those of the silent majority are far apart.

Just how bitter the competition between activists now is is illustrated by the story of water. In 1994 water affairs were set up as self-contained units within municipalities. Water was controlled by one man and his water unit issued the bills for water and collected the water rates. This worked well. But almost everywhere ANC politicians pulled these water units apart because they wanted to get their hands on the considerable revenue streams that water provided. Then, of course, they also failed to spend that money on maintaining the infrastructure for they had found much more interesting things to do with that money.

As municipal water problems mounted it was realised that the answer was to reconstitute the water units as they had been in 1994. The problem was, of course, was that this meant re-routing the water revenue stream back where it belonged and away from the people who had been enjoying it. This was done, for example, in Mangaung (Bloemfontein) and Buffalo City (East London). In both cases the man newly put in charge of water was assassinated.

Naturally, the squeeze on patronage is articulated in ideological terms and, usually, in bluntly racial terms. There is simply no doubt about the rejection of the GNU by ANC activists (let alone EFF and MKP, who are being kept out of power by the GNU). This was evident when the ANC, clearly spurred by the fact that the DA had been celebrating 100 days of the GNU, decided to have its own celebration. This was a drab and poorly attended affair. The sort of people who turn up for party events of this sort are activists – and the activists had no wish to celebrate.

This divide between what ANC activists think and feel and what ANC voters in general feel has always existed but the advent of the GNU has made it wider than ever.

A conservative, Christian electorate

The late Lawrie Schlemmer was incomparably the best analyst of South African public opinion and social structure that we have ever had. Lawrie, who was a director of the polling agency, MarkData, first drew my attention in the mid-1990s to a question he routinely asked in MarkData surveys which tested opinion about the proposition that it would be best if the government could work closely together with business or "the wider community" or similar expressions. Almost invariably something like two thirds of all respondents would endorse such propositions. There was clearly an appetite for a coalition wider than just the ANC.

Lawrie probed the matter further both in surveys and in focus groups and told me that despite all the negative racial stereotypes created by the apartheid period, a large and usually silent majority of black respondents were well aware of the major white contribution in making South Africa the most developed country in Africa. They were keen to retain the advantages of living in such a country and although they were happy to have an ANC government led by Mandela, they would ideally like such a government to be supported by the expertise, know-how and capital of the white community. There was, too, a degree of nervousness about how an African government might fare without such support.

Such opinions were, of course, much at variance with the assertive Africanism of Thabo Mbeki. When the white business community offered to second a thousand of their top managers to help the government in any way it chose, Mbeki not only failed to accept the offer but was insulted by the suggestion that the government might need help. He interpreted the offer as an expression of a white superiority complex and the result was a lasting freeze in business-government relations. At the same time Mbeki was busily "transforming" the civil service by replacing well-qualified and experienced whites with blacks who often lacked both qualifications and experience. He insisted, indeed, that any notion of a skills shortage among blacks was just "an urban legend". The result, as we know, was to cripple the civil service and the government.

What fascinated Lawrie was that while Mbeki's view was the dominant one and popular with the black middle classes who were his beneficiaries, the large silent majority of black voters was altogether more conservative. It deplored the abolition of the death penalty, it didn't like abortion, it was generally homophobic and patriarchal attitudes were common and strong. It was also extremely xenophobic about African immigrants. The ANC was a left wing party led, in the main, by atheists and agnostics, but the black majority which voted for it were mainly Christian conservatives. In addition, there has always been a large black majority which wants the best people to be chosen for jobs strictly on merit. Affirmative action was always popular with the minority who benefit from this policy but it has never been popular with the majority.

Perhaps the most striking case is the land issue. ANC (and EFF and MKP) activists all place overwhelming stress on the land issue, demanding expropriation without compensation and putting it at the head of their list of demands. Yet over and over again when we poll ANC voters we find that only 2-3% of them rank land as an important issue. And, to the great distress of ANC leaders, when Africans win a claim to land ownership they overwhelmingly choose to take money instead, dumping the land back on the market.

Lawrie and I often discussed this situation. I argued that such a dissonant situation was not atypical in societies which had experienced sudden and radical change. I pointed to Portugal which had a large peasantry, a powerful Catholic church and an extremely conservative middle class which had supported Salazar. Yet after the coup in 1974 Portugal had for some years a popular government of the far left. Gradually, however, this dissonance decreased and the country settled down to a succession of social democratic and Christian democratic governments in the standard West European mould.

The question thus posed was whether South Africa too would gradually move to a form of government more consonant with the views of the silent majority. We were by no means sure of this because of South Africa's high unemployment and the prevalence of populist economic views. We realised that the abolition of apartheid had unleashed extremely strong pressures for African advancement, often without a recognition of the necessary educational criteria essential to make that advancement possible.

Crudely speaking, the end of apartheid had brought huge pressure to satisfy black material needs and at the same time those hopes and aspirations had been crushed by poverty and mass unemployment. On top of that the electoral system in SA gave the party elites the power to impose their choices and their discipline on the electorate. All of this muffled the voices from below and magnified the voices from above.

2024: a moderate majority and the fading of the Left

That conundrum remains but the polling we did for the 2024 election had two clear lessons. First, ANC politicians have desperately tried to shift the blame for mass unemployment onto "white monopoly capital" but this has not worked. The general failures of ANC governance – power cuts, water cut-offs, poor or no services, obvious corruption etc – have become too clear and overwhelming. Secondly, during the election campaign we frequently asked respondents for their views on coalition governments should the ANC fail to gain a majority. The whole notion of the ANC needing a coalition partner was then too novel for opinion to have fully crystallised but in every case pluralities said their favourite choice of a coalition partner for the ANC was the DA. This was, of course, in line with the preferences to which Lawrie had drawn my attention back in the 1990s.

Meanwhile there are signs of the fading of the Left alternative. The SACP matters far less now. It is tiny and few listen to what it says. Its leader, Solly Mapaila, rails against the GNU but the SACP ministers in government cling to their posts and utter not a word. Cosatu too has lost an enormous amount of ground. Union membership is way down, there is not a little corruption in some unions and the unions are either too weak for the threat of strike action to mean much or, in the case of public servants, union members are already so well paid that there is little enthusiasm for strike action. In the election the EFF and MKP together got less than 25% of the vote and both parties seem to have fallen back a bit since then.

The EFF, in particular, is in poor shape. When Julius Malema founded the party ten years ago he had every intention of becoming President. He can hardly have expected that a decade later his party would be losing ground, falling in the polls and with its co-leader, Floyd Shivambu, absconding to join a rival party. The MKP has thus far failed to put down local roots and its leader is 82. If he dies or even becomes incapacitated, the MKP's future is most unclear.

The future of the GNU

The ANC itself is still full of anti-GNU left wingers but they have clearly decided to go along with Ramaphosa, probably all the way to 2027. With the EFF and MKP not really getting their act together as an Opposition, the result is that the GNU gets a fairly easy ride.

The result is that the impression of peace, goodwill and a government united to help the country sits easily abreast a public opinion which, whatever the anti-GNU activists say, is clearly favourable to the GNU. Everything depends, however, on whether the GNU can achieve a higher rate of economic growth and, even better, a drop in the unemployment rate. If it can't, the GNU is ultimately doomed.

However, the future of the GNU is bound to become entangled with the race to succeed Ramaphosa. And by definition that will be a contest conducted among activists. Moreover, the SACP is strongest in such a contest – Paul Mashatile, Panyaza Lesufi and Kgosientso Ramokgopa (Min for Electricity) are all SACP members. Ronald Lamola and Senzo Mchunu are not (and nor is Fikile Mbalula). Lamola was a strong opponent of Jacob Zuma, supporting Motlanthe for the presidency against Zuma. The DA has already made it clear that it would not want to be part of a Mashatile-led administration and doubtless the same applies with any other SACP member.

Mashatile is under investigation and could be disqualified if open corruption can be proved. But this is unlikely. The prosecution service is just not up to it. Lesufi could then emerge as Deputy President.

Lamola clearly enjoys Ramaphosa's patronage but the ANC conference will be an auction, as usual. What happened in 2017 was that Zuma arrived at the Nasrec conference armed with large amounts of cash – contributed by the Guptas and by SOEs, BEE moguls etc. He felt very sure of victory. But Ramaphosa had been on a successful fund-raising campaign largely among white business, who contributed very large sums in their keeness to see the back of Zuma.

When the results were announced at Nasrec Zuma looked ashen and completely stricken. He knew in a trice that he had simply been out-bid. He had distributed vast sums but Ramaphosa had clearly handed out even more. The shock for Zuma was enormous. He was familiar in detail with all the money-raising sources within government and within the ANC. That was the world he inhabited and knew. And Zuma knew that it was quite impossible for anyone other than himself to raise an even larger sum within that world. So he knew immediately that Ramaphosa had to have had access to very large donors outside that ANC world, in his eyes almost a foul in itself. So, ever since he has opposed Ramaphosa as the candidate of "white monopoly capital". And he has refused to allow the MKP to have an elective conference, saying he doesn't want money to swing the votes there. Clearly, the traumatic shock of being outbid is something he never wants to face again.

Paul Mashatile clearly has the ability to marshal large sums of money to bolster his presidential bid, while Ramaphosa's candidate is likely to be Ronald Lamola or Senzo Mchunu. (Fikile Mbalula may also run but could be squeezed out.) Lamola or Mchunu's chances depend on whether he/they can marshal the same support from white business that was crucial to Ramaphosa's victory. But this time, as it were, all the moves are known in advance. And, of course, if Zuma is still politically active in 2027 it is possible that he will intervene with large sums, perhaps even raising more from the Guptas in the hope that they might then return to South Africa for an encore.

These complications will make it harder for Lamola/Mchunu and the EFF/MKP are bound to see this as a point when they can regain influence by joining Mashatile's governing team. Their objective is to reunite the ANC, EFF and MKP into what they call the Patriotic Front. On the other hand the business community has played a vital and central part in Operation Vulindlela and it will assume that their role has to continue, so they could provide Lamola/Mchunu with enough cash to win. For they will very much want the GNU to continue.

It is highly problematic that the white business community should thus become the central player in the ANC's decision-making process. But no matter how discreet business may be in its political donations, if Lamola/Mchunu turns up with enough to outbid Mashatile or another Zuma-friendly candidate, everyone will know where the money came from.

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