Unless you are familiar with how the GNU works, the ANC-DA staged tensions seem like a straightforward story. The two opponents, fighting for dominance over South Africa's liberal spirit and facing a local government election to decide who will win, are about to lose significant support because the GNU has not made a real difference for ordinary people, the voters.
Each adversary has become the chalice for the other and cannot be dislodged from the coalition without collateral damage. Both may be on a side of history whose correctness will depend on the extremes their collective memberships can reach.
To South Africans familiar with the extent of maverick politics each party can summon, the threats to leave the GNU and “mabahambe” are, at best, temper tantrums, mitigated by fear of losing the advantages that come with holding executive power positions. The ANC was clear that it aimed to stay in the GNU to maintain state power; it argued that it needed this power to promote the NDR. Similarly, the DA explained that it chose the GNU route to prevent an ANC-EFF-MK alliance coalition. These conditions or threats have not changed and are instead getting acutely real.
The true nature of the tension between the ANC and the DA is the narrowing policy gap on how to manage South Africa as a political economy. The nearly complete withdrawal of the SACP from the alliance as it is currently configured is the loudest declaration by the left that it is suffocating within a neoliberal coalition governing the country. The liberal order is emerging as a dominant and difficult-to-challenge hegemony. To those who see the ANC as the force of the left, the concessions in the GNU are a sign of approaching reckoning.
The mandate to govern South Africa is derived from parliament and no longer from the headquarters of political parties. The victory in depriving the ANC of its absolute power to rule was celebrated through blocking the seventh administration's budget and reviewing the microeconomic fiscal framework. The story of such celebrations does not end; the force and power the DA currently wields within the GNU, unless the ANC decides to embrace the suitors it previously dismissed as the worst to court, has no opposition except the endurance to compete for hegemonic dominance. Until the middle of the local government election campaigns, the victory of being part of the DA's GNU remains uncertain.
The memories of an apartheid past and the vistas of the anti-apartheid struggle are losing their lustre, and invoking them is quickly attracting little interest from the predominant new voter, the Tintswalo generation. Instead of a service delivery arsenal, which the ANC has abdicated its communication to the DA-in-the-GNU, the ANC has retreated to its vintage self with little connection with millennials, who might be a decisive voting cohort in any future election.
While it is true that politicians often do not consistently uphold their values, South Africa's leaders have shown an ability to face challenges and operate beyond narrow interests
Whether legitimate or not, power causes those who hold it to slowly deteriorate. As it spreads where it previously did not exist, it signals — through signs such as internal conflict among those losing it — that it will never return to its former state. Haphazard attempts to regain it will likely fail or only push it further away.
In a volatile democracy like South Africa, the subsequent loss of political power will result in its diffusion into several power nodes that can only be co-ordinated by those who share common stakes in the affected area. The liberal order, which is gaining influence in South Africa, is merely trying to coexist with the ANC's social and political capital rather than fundamentally overthrowing it, as the optics hold the fragile centre. Neoliberals have recognised that to succeed, they must avoid an unfavourable response similar to the magnitude of July 7 2021 again.
This explains why the national dialogue has suddenly become the target of the liberal establishment. It has evolved into a process that could produce an outcome as monumental as the Freedom Charter, which may create a new focus for the nation to address remaining issues from the 1990-1996 political settlement. In the current situation, the games played in parliament highlight the urgent need for leadership, calling on the freely elected representatives to rise to the occasion and guide the nation towards a brighter future.
While it is true that politicians often do not consistently uphold their values, South Africa's leaders have shown an ability to face challenges and operate beyond narrow interests. The national dialogue, with its potential to shape South Africa's future, offers hope and encourages engagement. The moment for change may have arrived. The electorate ordered it; civil society must respond. The country cannot allow the staged tension to derail a march towards social cohesion anchored by social and economic justice. This potential for change should inspire us all to act.
• Dr FM Lucky Mathebula is head of faculty, People Management and founder of The Thinc Foundation, a think-tank based at the Da Vinci Institute.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.