John Matisonn: GNU survives budget test; next contest? Johannesburg

Key topics:DA credited for blocking VAT hike, boosting its public imageGNU tensions rise as Mashatile eyes presidency without DALocal elections loom with DA targeting Johannesburg dominance.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By John Matisonn.Listen to this story instead:.The ANC-DA anchor partnership in the GNU survived its biggest test when a meeting of the two parties on Friday agreed to continue working together and set up a new mechanism to avoid another last-minute public fight.While the GNU survived, tensions have increased among politicians, as Paul Mashatile’s potential succession as president highlighted the possibility that he would dismiss the DA from government, while some in the DA think this could be good for their party.The DA appears to have won the battle for public opinion, enhancing their brand characteristic as the best party at governing. Although every party claimed responsibility for the decision to stop the VAT increase, opinion polling and online comments suggest that the DA gets the lion’s share of the credit and the ANC most of the blame.Parties are looking to the next chance to test shifts in support in local elections, when the DA aims to emerge as the biggest party in the Johannesburg city council. Local elections must be held at the end of 2026 or early in 2027.The battle over the VAT increase highlighted the ANC’s weakness in governing, but also showed that a narrow majority coalition could be cobbled together without the DA, MKP or EFF, though the majority would be so small it would be inherently unstable.ANC Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana succeeded several Finance Ministers, including Trevor Manuel, Pravin Gordham and Tito Mboweni, who managed budget politics well. Godonwana has the same intentions as his predecessors, and this debacle may not be entirely his fault, but in the end the political skills evident during the time of his predecessors were absent.In the end, all the parties wanted to stop the VAT increase, so it was stopped. But the ANC continues to fiercely resist the inevitable restructuring of government around growth priorities, because it would disrupt the patronage network of government jobs that has grown ever larger during its 30 years in power. There are numerous agencies set up over the last 30 years, as well as some even older, that are no longer fit for purpose. The ANC’s problem is it cannot let anything go, which makes it unable to use increasingly scarce resources for something that will deliver better results.These include fast-tracking the cadastre system to speed up mining and mineral exploration, adding agricultural extension officers to boost black smallholder farming, making wifi easily and cheaply available in townships, and reviving increasingly broken infrastructure. The ten parties that joined the ANC’s press conference announcing the end of the VAT increase made plain their resentment of the DA for hogging the credit for stopping the increase.Read more:.Court slams brakes on VAT hike after DA, EFF win legal battle.Some in the DA believe it won’t be so bad to let them have it, while the DA focusses all its attention on turning positive sentiment into votes, first in the local elections.The DA’s star is rising even among black voters, as their VAT fight showed them on the side of the poor nine months in the GNU, when fears stoked up by the ANC that the DA would bring back apartheid may have eased.The DA has a good chance of becoming the biggest party in Johannesburg, the big prize, able to demand the mayor’s chain and to form a coalition. Showing a turnaround in Johannesburg and other towns would be the best marketing tool for the 2029 national election.On the ANC side, members of the negotiating teams see Paul Mashatile’s elevation to the presidency in 2027 as inevitable, and his dislike of the DA as a given. The Achilles Heel for the ANC is that he is not the vote-getter President Cyril Ramaphosa has been.The DA’s victory in the courts included orders for the Finance Minister to pay 50% of the Democratic Alliance and the Economic Freedom Fighters costs, while the speaker of the National Assembly and the chairperson of the National Council of Provinces are to pay the other 50% .After meeting the ANC on Friday, DA leader John Steenhuisen was bullish about the GNU: “We have engaged in a number of issues, including the events of the last few weeks, and how we are going to now proceed and process a Budget for South Africa that is credible, costed, and how we can start contributing to providing a stable platform for growth and jobs agenda. It was very constructive and we are very pleased.”But IFP national spokesperson Mkhuleko Hlengwa complained that the DA “cannot be in government today and opposition the next day.” The DA and IFP has historically been close allies.Godongwana will now have to find a way to close the gap left by the loss of the VAT increase and table the budget instruments from scratch.

John Matisonn: GNU survives budget test; next contest? Johannesburg

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