Mailbox | The GNU: Two years, three tests

In July 2024, the Referendum Party set three modest targets for the Government of National Unity: 3% growth, unemployment below 30% and fewer than 30 murders per 100,000 people by the end of 2025. Two years on, Marcel Strydom checks the results, and all three were missed. Growth reached just 1.1% in 2025 and has since stalled. Unemployment, at 33.6%, is slightly higher than when the coalition began. Murders have fallen but remain far above the benchmark. Strydom argues that coalition optimism has once again been mistaken for structural change, and that the answer lies in handing provinces more power..By Marcel Strydom*.On the 29th May 2024, South African politics changed forever.After 30 years of uninterrupted ANC majority rule, the loss of their parliamentary majority - and their ability to govern alone - created an awkward political reality for virtually everyone involved.For President Ramaphosa, a coalition with the ANC’s breakaway parties, the EFF and MK, would likely have seen his head being made a condition of any negotiation. At the same time, the DA suddenly faced its own dilemma. Having spent much of the election warning voters about the prospect of a “doomsday coalition” it was suddenly presented with an opportunity to prevent precisely that outcome.And so the GNU was born: a coalition of parties with profound ideological differences, held together by the mantra of pragmatism rather than any recognisable political programme.While much of the political and media establishment framed the GNU as the beginning of a new era, the Referendum Party - which has since merged into the VF Plus - took a more cautious approach. Having contested the election primarily on a platform of Cape Independence, it accepted the political reality produced by the election, wished the new government well, but added an important caveat:“Hope for the best, prepare for the worst”.My position was that the GNU should not be allowed to define its own success. While governments can often be quite good at the pomp and circumstance, what ultimately matters is whether people’s lives actually improve.Therefore, in July 2024, RP established three numerical benchmarks against which the GNU’s performance could later be judged by the end of 2025. They were:Economic growth of at least 3%.Official unemployment below 30%.A murder rate below 30 per 100,000 people. Far from being ambitious goals, these targets were designed to be modest and were set below the government’s own National Development Plan and those of better-governed African states such as Rwanda, Botswana and Mauritius.While RP has now been incorporated into the VF Plus, those benchmarks are still worth revisiting.Growth: target missedSouth Africa entered its GNU era with sluggish economic growth - just 0.5% in 2024. While this had improved in 2025 to 1.1%, this was barely one-third of the 3% benchmark RP had set. 2026 has failed to provide any acceleration of GDP growth, expanding by 0.4% in the first quarter, before contracting by 0.2% in the second quarter of 2026. Worse still, with a 2024-2025 population growth rate of 1.23%, the economy is struggling to keep up with population growth, resulting in stagnant real GDP per capita growth.This is disappointing precisely because parties such as the DA and VF Plus entered the GNU in the hope that participation from within government could restrain some of the ANC’s worst economic instincts, improve confidence and create space for better policy. Yet participation by opposition parties has not produced a fundamental break with the ANC’s National Democratic Revolution. The Expropriation Act has been signed into law, preparations for NHI continue, and many of the interventionist and race-based policies that have characterised ANC government remain intact..Unemployment: it's even worse nowWhen the GNU was formed in the second quarter of 2024, South Africa’s official unemployment rate stood at 33.5%. Initially, the GNU saw some progress in reducing unemployment, with it falling to 31.4% by the fourth quarter of 2025 - which while above the benchmark, at least represented movement in the right direction.However, those trends have since reversed. In the first quarter of 2026 unemployment rose to 32.7% and in the second quarter alone, the number of unemployed South Africans increased by 345,000, reaching approximately 8.5 million, while the number of employed people actually fell by 16,000. More than two years after the formation of the GNU, at 33.6%, the official unemployment rate is now marginally higher than it was when the arrangement began..Murder: moving in the right direction, but still a bloodbathUnlike growth and unemployment, the murder trend has improved materially. Using SAPS quarterly figures, South Africa recorded approximately 26,232 murders during calendar 2024, equivalent to roughly 42 murders per 100,000 people. By 2025, the number fell to approximately 23,642. Against Stats SA's mid-year population estimate of 63.1 million, that gives a murder rate of around 37.5 per 100,000 people.This decline has continued into 2026. During the first six months of 2025, approximately 11,497 murders were recorded nationally. During the corresponding period in 2026, the number fell to approximately 10,608 - a decline of around 7.7%.Nonetheless, this still remains substantially above the benchmark of 30 murders per 100,000 people by the end of 2025, while serious structural weaknesses remain within the policing system. Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia continues to push back against policing devolution to more competent jurisdictions such as the Western Cape, while at the same time admitting that SAPS is “not equipped” to tackle issues such as gang violence..The numbers are inTwo years after the formation of the GNU, some improvements have occurred, but all three of the benchmarks set in July 2024 were ultimately missed.This should come as no surprise, as one of South Africa’s most significant weaknesses is its endless optimism and the tendency to confuse political moments with serious structural change. The constitutional transition of the 1990s, followed by “Ramaphoria” in 2018, and then the formation of the GNU in 2024 each produced waves of enthusiasm, yet each time the underlying political architecture remained largely intact.The GNU has proved no exception, and the claim that it has fundamentally altered South Africa’s political direction remains dubious at best. While ministers like Dr Pieter Groenewald have earned widespread praise for restoring operational discipline to Correctional Services, macro-policy remains an ANC monopoly. With the ANC holding the key security and economic ministries, opposition figures in cabinet find themselves constrained by legacy legislation – forced, as in the case of the DA in Agriculture, to enforce existing race-based transformation mandates rather than enact true reform..Read more:.GHL to GNU: Abandon leftist dogma for proven economic growth.The deeper problem is structural. South Africa continues to be governed through a highly centralised unitary state. Economic policy, policing, labour regulation, and a vast range of other functions continue to be determined overwhelmingly at the central government level despite enormous differences between provinces and communities. A serious programme of decentralisation would allow the constituent parts to take greater responsibility for the day-to-day governing of their respective constituents, rather than forcing different parts of the country to conform to a single one-size-fits-all model.In three years’ time, we will once again go to the polls to determine who gets to govern us from Pretoria. Yet, the real question we should be asking is how much Pretoria should be governing us in the first place..*Marcel Jean Strydom is a dedicated Durbanville resident, sales manager and active community advocate. His extensive background in account management, communication and financial stewardship gives him a practical, solutions-focused approach to local governance..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 every morning on 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.

Mailbox | The GNU: Two years, three tests

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