The ANC needs the DA, but they won’t share the reins: William Saunderson-Meyer

The ANC needs the DA, but they won’t share the reins: William Saunderson-Meyer

The implications for the ANC of the GNU breaking apart
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Key topics

  • The ANC needs the DA in the GNU, but resists meaningful power-sharing.

  • The DA is underrepresented in Cabinet and losing influence in the GNU.

  • Without the DA, the ANC risks instability, economic fallout, and KZN losses.

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By William Saunderson-Meyer

JAUNDICED EYE

The Government of National Unity (GNU) as it is currently constituted is somewhat of a political paradox. The party that values it the least, the ANC, objectively needs it most. Whereas the DA, the party that, on balance, needs it least, is the emotionally most committed.

The GNU has been a chastening experience for the DA. It’s been manipulated, abused and betrayed. In its eagerness to keep the radical MK and EFF out of the GNU, it settled for a deal in which it is ministerially under-represented. It compounded that mistake by ingenuously accepting the ANC’s assurances regarding joint decision-making and resolving differences. The cost of those missteps has been the ignominy of watching one DA ‘red line’ after the other being cheerfully ignored by an ANC that is not remotely interested in compromise.

Were the DA now to leave or be turfed from the GNU, the ripple effects on South Africa Inc would be serious. For the DA itself, however, it would be pretty much a reversion to the status quo of the past 25 years, that of being the Official Opposition. That’s a job critical to the survival of our constitutional democracy, one at which the DA excelled and, in contrast, its MK successor has failed abysmally.

In contrast, the ANC is much weakened if a DA is not its leading partner in the GNU. President Cyril Ramaphosa is toast.

Only substantial economic growth can rescue the governing party from an accelerating slide in support, to forestall a local election bloodbath in 2026 and general election oblivion in 2029. If the ANC is serious about implementing the kind of policies necessary — there is a big question mark whether it can abandon its doctrinaire socialist affectations without dividing the party further — it is only the DA that has both the ministerial expertise and public support to achieve this.

The ANC with 159 MPs ((40% representation) depends heavily on the DA’s 87 MPs (22%), given that combined all other eight partners in the GNU muster only 41 MPs (10%). While the ANC is able, at a push, to cobble together a parliamentary majority on contentious issues without the DA, as last week’s passage of the Budget framework showed, it will always be a nerve-wracking and destabilising process. The more rats and mice parties there are involved, the more difficult it will be for the ANC to find consensus, the more trade-offs or buy-offs the ANC will have to make, and the more vulnerable it will be to disruption by an MK and EFF who are pulling in a diametrically opposite direction.

The exit of the DA will embolden the pro-MK/EFF dissidents within the ANC, clustered around Ramaphosa’s deadly rival, Deputy President Paul Mashatile. It’s Mashatile who warned the DA this week that the subscription fee for GNU membership was to vote for the Budget and departmental appropriation votes that follow. Mashatile, as nasty a piece of work as you could find in a party that contains a gutter ensemble of villainous scumbags, is trying to surf the ANC’s powerful groundswell of antipathy towards the DA, following that party's rejection of the Budget on the VAT-increase issue. He has two goals: first, the exit of the DA and the inclusion of the EFF and eventually MK — in other words, the reunification of the ANC, to be followed by its calcification into an irreversibly hard-left entity — and second, the ousting of Ramaphosa.

Read more:

The ANC needs the DA, but they won’t share the reins: William Saunderson-Meyer
South Africa’s fragile GNU is fracturing, and the consequences could be dire

There are also potentially dire ramifications in the country’s most politically volatile province, KwaZulu-Natal. In the 80-seat legislature, MK (37 MPLs) and the EFF (2 MPLs) have been kept from power by a precarious combination of the IFP (15 MPLs), the ANC (14MPLs), the DA (11 MPLs), and the NFP (1 MPL). Given the history of violence in this blood-soaked region, as well as the cost to the ANC of losing control of another economically key province, the DA here plays a pivotal role that ultimately benefits the ANC.

Apart from the DA’s arithmetic importance for the ANC in terms of its parliamentary majority and holding onto KZN, there’s a significant public relations factor that it cannot ignored. The DA’s role in the GNU is important both in terms of investment and diplomacy. The business community, both locally and abroad, is measurably reassured by the DA’s participation —check out the response of the stock market, as well as currency and bond rates to any threat of DA exclusion. The DA is also the thin blue line, in the eyes of many in the Trump administration, which by a whisker keeps an ANC-led South Africa from even harsher measures of disapproval than those already enacted.

Then there’s the local marketplace that matters most, that of voter opinion.  Opinion polls show that while there is growing disappointment with the performance of the GNU, voters nevertheless remain very positive towards the idea of coalitions.

Social Research Foundation surveys (with a 4% error margin) in September 2024 found that around 60% of all voters thought the GNU was performing well. By February this year — before the Budget wars — that number was just under 50%. Nevertheless, a Brenthurst Foundation survey (3% error margin) has since showed that 76% of voters expressed openness to some form of coalition governance.

The issue, then, for the political parties is who will carry the can for the GNU’s suboptimal performance. Currently, the jury is out, although the trend is running against the ANC. A Brenthurst Foundation survey conducted over February/March (2% error margin) and released this week, shows that if an election were held today, modelled for a likely voter turnout of 58%, the ANC would win 43% of the vote, up 3% from 2024. This is seemingly at the expense of MK and the EFF, which are down four and three percentage points respectively, to 11% and 7%. The DA would win 27% electoral support, up five percentage points, meaning that it has narrowed the gap with the ANC from 18% to 16%.

Equally worrying for the ANC is that 72% of all voters think the economic situation is bad, including 58% of ANC supporters. In a similar vein, 70% of voters believe the country is going in the wrong direction, including 57% of ANC supporters.

Nor is all the scapegoating and blame-shifting, enthusiastically amplified by the commentariat, working particularly well. While 55% said that US President Donald Trump’s executive order halting aid to South Africa was unjustified, almost half (49%) put responsibility for the consequences of Trump’s order at the door of Ramaphosa or the ANC. Only 16% blamed AfriForum, despite the vicious abuse, at times verging on hysteria, from the ANC, MK, EFF and the legacy media towards the Afrikaner lobby group.The DA was blamed by 6%.

The impasse with the DA poses an enormous dilemma to Ramaphosa and the ANC. It undoubtedly needs the DA in the GNU but its tripartite allies, the majority of its members, and probably a majority in the national executive committee and Cabinet, are implacably opposed to allowing the DA a meaningful role, mainly because they can’t contemplate the slightest policy compromise. Yet the DA, however dearly it wants to be in the GNU, will not remain if it’s at the expense of being the ANC’s prop or fig leaf.

Against this backdrop, it has done precisely the right thing. Stay in the game, for now. Let the ANC flail.

This article was first published by Politicsweb and is republished with permission.

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