DA remains ANC’s ‘guest in the GNU, not its coalition partner’: Mokonyane lashes out at Zille

The ANC has lashed out at DA federal council chair Helen Zille, telling her that her party remains the ANC’s guest in the government of national unity and not its coalition partner. 

The GNU was conceptualised and is led by the ANC which invited other political parties to be a part of it, the party’s leaders have said. 

The party called comments by Zille on the GNU reckless and not in keeping with someone who was an invited guest.

ANC deputy secretary-general Nomvula Mokonyane said they are aware that since the GNU incorporates many political parties there would be a lot of contestation in the space which could be “exploited to undermine the positive intentions”.

“We as the ANC are duty-bound to nurture this, we can't be as reckless as Mrs Zille, we can't be reckless because it is us who invited people. She was a guest and she remains a guest of the ANC,” said Mokonyane.

“And if she has any discomfort she is bound to actually express it and it is within her right but not to undermine the ... majority of political parties that are represented in parliament because all of them have got a mandate.”

Mokonyane was responding to comments made by Zille during the week saying that the term GNU was essentially a farce and that the ANC was actually in a coalition with the ANC.

These comments seem to have angered a lot of people in the ANC who feel vindicated for speaking out against any coalition arrangement that includes the DA.

But Mokonyane, and the party’s head of election Mdumiseni Ntuli, said the situation the ANC found itself in was a result of the “will of the people” which produced electoral results that failed to give one single political party an outright majority.

“We all said we embraced the will of the people and we're working through that will of us having 40% to grow our influence and we really hope you will have an appreciation the ANC has been able to influence more than nine political parties to work together with us to protect the hard-won gains of our democracy and shape the way forward. Hence we have put forward the issue of a national dialogue so that we take all South Africans along,” said Mokonyane.

Ntuli said everyone in the ANC agreed the GNU was the best possible route the party could have taken after the polls where it received 40% of the vote.

Therefore, he said, comments by the likes of Zille were expected but the DA remained the ANC’s guest.

“I think we have embraced the GNU and we're leading it. Of course we understand that the GNU is going to remain a very contested terrain. It's not surprising the behaviour of Helen Zille for instance. All that she does and what she says, this is going to be a contested terrain. We said this right from the onset when we were arguing that it is the ANC that has invited everybody into the GNU, including the DA,” said Ntuli.

“So at times it sounds arrogant when we say it is the ANC-led GNU, but practically and in theory it's what it meant because we conceptualised this idea, we sold it to parties. Each one of them agreed and assented to the document on the statement of intent.

“What we have accepted as the ANC is that it’s going to be a contested terrain. The opposition is not going to [lay low] including those in the GNU because everybody wants to set the agenda for this country to prepare for 2026 and 2029.”

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