Opinion by Dr Vincent Maphai, Chair of the Sibanye-Stillwater Board
This is my starting point in answering the question: Is the Government of National Unity an asset or liability? – the topic I addressed at the Govan Mbeki institutional public lecture, hosted by the Centre for the Advancement of Non-Racialism and Democracy (CANRAD) at Nelson Mandela University on 23 April.
A government of national unity (GNU) is not new to South Africa. Our first GNU was established on April 27, 1994, immediately following the country's first democratic elections, and it lasted until 1997.
A second GNU was formed in June 2024 following the May 2024 elections, but what we have now is not so much a GNU as a coalition government.
It will be with us is for a while because gone are the days of the dominant one party system when, for example, under former President Thabo Mbeki, the ANC held 70% of the vote. The ANC is down to 40% of the vote and things are not looking good for the party for the next local and national elections.
The ANC has lost 30% of the vote since Mbeki and yet no one has resigned. It is still being run by the very same people who brought it down, and these people remain unreconstructed.
Under the circumstances, creating the GNU was essential and it achieved the important unintended consequence of toning down the level of vitriol between the ANC and DA. It also toned down the arrogance of one party dominance. Both are positive achievements, which can be seen as an asset.
The alternative would have created a political vacuum that would soon have been filled with undesirable people, including warlords and criminals. The Madlanga Commission has clearly shown how the collapse of our policing, justice and municipal system created the opening for criminals to manipulate government institutions to their own end.
This crisis started long before the GNU, and it can be argued that without it, the floodgates of corruption would have opened to an unstoppable degree.
On the liability side, ask any accountant about diminishing value – what we call depreciation over time - when assets become liabilities. The liability of the current GNU is evident when compared to the Mandela-led GNU which was a confidence-building mechanism.
What Mandela was doing was saying “we are the agency with the biggest vote but let us bring minorities into government”. This promotes unity and stability in the country, whereas if a section of your community is excluded, they can undermine unity and stability.
The current GNU is not primarily driven by the need for national unity; it is more a temporary cessation of hostilities, or, in other words, it was as a result of a political stalemate where neither could continue on their own. It was a case of “I don’t like you but I need you” between the ANC and DA and the other parties. The Mandela GNU, by contrast, was a case of “I don’t need you, but I want you inside the house”.
By its nature the current GNU is very unstable because the parties are working together in the interim only because they have to, but at the same time they are working hard to undermine each other in the next election. The nature of the coalition is temporary and hence the asset risks becoming a liability. If one of the parties gets 50 + 1 percent they would probably drop the other because culturally and ideologically they are far apart.
Another liability of the GNU is that it is an agreement between ruling elites and this in itself is corrupting. The GNU is at serious risk of becoming little more than a club of elites and an increasing liability if it does not urgently address all the issues affecting ordinary people on the ground. The focus currently is not on what is good for ordinary people, it is about who gets which position in government.
Before the last elections the DA was speaking out about the gravy train, the blue lights, and inflated size of cabinet. Have you heard them complain about any of these things today and yet the executive part of government is three times what it was before the GNU. The comforts are corrosive and people are not in hurry to give them up.
Both parties have their eye on the prize and this might require a realignment, depending on the results of the next local and national elections.
We see them going in very different directions in key areas such as foreign policy. The ANC is loyal to all the countries that supported the struggle against apartheid, such as Palestine, China, Russia and Eastern Europe. The DA’s loyalty is more aligned to Western Europe, the USA, and Israel.
This is the end of term for Cyril Ramaphosa and if Paul Mashatile becomes president he might talk to the EFF and MK if he feels more comfortable with them than with the DA.
If, however, Patrice Motsepe stands and becomes president, then the GNU coalition between the ANC and DA might continue as Motsepe would not call for nationalisation and he is nowhere near the EFF or MK ideologically. The DA is committed to the free market and they are more likely to find Motsepe’s ideology very acceptable.
The liability of this ongoing ideological cold war between South Africa’s two largest parties is that unity as a moral and political imperative is forgotten in the process.
Which leads me to conclude that what our country actually needs now is a national civic movement of all South Africans from all walks of life and different political persuasions, coming together to build on all the areas we agree on, rather than focusing on the areas on which we disagree.
We all want to see a turnaround in employment, water and food security, housing, safety, professional municipal and public services, and the rooting out of all the corruption in government.
We have achieved very effective national civic movements before, such as the United Democratic Front, which from 1983 to 1989 became one of the most prominent non-racial civic movements for all South Africans, including more than 600 affiliated organisations.
Democracy cannot work if ordinary people have taken leave from politics. Everyone has to be involved and a civic movement that unites the country and solves the problems together has become an absolute imperative.
We do not need a government of convenience and opportunism where the plight of ordinary people has been forgotten. As citizens we have not experienced any substantiall improvement with the GNU. We can only hope that behind the scenes the seeds for greater collaboration are being sewn, but we are not seeing this yet.