DA ministers and deputy ministers in the Government of National Unity are said to be preparing to exit their ministerial offices as the party finalises plans to quit government in the coming days.
This comes as the ANC, with the support of Action SA, the IFP and other smaller parties in the National Assembly, on Wednesday voted in favour of finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s controversial budget despite objections from the DA, its biggest partner in the GNU.
This has resulted in calls within the DA parliamentary caucus and its other internal structures for it to pull out of the GNU.
This also comes after more than six weeks of budget negotiations with the ANC hit a deadlock, culminating in the National Assembly’s adoption of the budget without the support of the DA last night.
Other dominant parties in the National Assembly such as the MK Party and the EFF also did not vote in favour of the ANC’s “pro-tax, anti-growth budget”.
The ANC passed the budget with the support of its other GNU partners and smaller parties by a slim margin, with 194 voting in favour and 182 against.
TimesLIVE has learnt from several DA MPs that in a day of high drama, party leader John Steenhuisen convened a meeting with his MPs serving as ministers and deputy ministers to inform them of the impending decision to withdraw from the GNU as the ANC and the blue party were not finding each other while the 2pm debate deadline for the budget approached.
Earlier in the day, a recording of an ANC parliamentary caucus meeting was leaked to TimesLIVE in which President Cyril Ramaphosa told his MPs that the DA had defined itself outside the GNU during the budget negotiations.
The DA wanted the ANC to drop the 0.5 percentage point hike in VAT for this year and next and introduce a comprehensive economic policy review, but the ANC rejected this, saying some of the DA's issues were not budget related.
DA figures, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said it was just a matter of time before their party’s decision to walk away from the GNU was announced as the exit plan was already being ironed out.
We’re not going to make a rushed announcement. We will sit as the relevant structures and make an announcement in due course about where this leaves us.
— John Steenhuisen, DA leader
“It will be impossible to justify to our constituency why we should remain in this thing [GNU],” said one MP, pointing out how the ANC had previously ignored its concerns on the Bela Act and the Expropriation Act.
“Everyone accepts that this impasse on VAT leaves us with only one option, leaving.”
The DA federal executive is scheduled to meet on Thursday, where it will be decided whether the party should remain in the GNU, but most in the party last night insisted exiting was the dominant view after the budget defeat.
“There has never been any appetite for the ANC to share power.”
Steenhuisen said as the party’s FedEx, they were not in a rush to announce a decision on their participation in GNU.
“We’re not going to make a rushed announcement. We will sit as the relevant structures and make an announcement in due course about where this leaves us.
“It will have to be in the next 24 to 48 hours, we’ve got to have the federal executive meetings, I’ve got to meet the cabinet caucus and the parliamentary caucus. And once that’s done, we will make our announcement about what our next steps are.”
The DA is also launching a court challenge against the budget, arguing the finance committee made several procedural flaws during the adoption of its report on the fiscal framework and revenue proposals.
A staff member in a DA minister’s office indicated they were told as early as last week about a looming GNU exit: “We were preparing for this time as early as last week. The minister told us to start concluding reports and I think the party understood that this eventuality was coming.”
Another DA MP said there was a group that wanted the DA to stay on and fight from within, but support for this stance was waning.
“I think it’s likely when we meet at FedEx a decision will be taken that we must leave [the GNU] but there is another thought that maybe we should stay and make them force us to leave. I don’t see it winning, but I think it's worth exploring. I am not sure what will come out of the meeting, but I can tell you a lot of people will be saying we must leave.”
An ANC insider familiar with the discussions said Ramaphosa was likely to convene a meeting with the party’s top seven leaders to reflect on the outcomes of the budget vote and its implications on the current composition of the GNU.
“I suspect the president will have to call a meeting with the officials to discuss the outcomes and a way forward. He didn’t seem keen to kick the DA out, but the DP [Paul Mashatile] was of the view that they should be removed. In fact he instructed Mdu [one of Mashatile’s advisers] to speak to them to relay that the rejection of the budget means they are out.
“I think we can assume that Herman will be interested in a supply and confidence agreement if they want to partner with us. If they want to be in government, we now have space. The EFF is another matter because it’s like exchanging one headache for another. Julius is uncontrollable, we can’t have a minister who will push the president to fire him because of what he says in public."
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