It is rare in South African politics that something can emerge to be so self-evidently true that the recognition of it as such transcends above the usual fault lines.
To make it more relatable to well-adjusted non-political folk, let me provide this example. When you buy a car or a house, you do not negotiate by telling the seller what your highest offer is because you would be giving away your negotiation leverage. This is obvious to most people.
And yet, this is exactly what all former opposition parties did when they entered the GNU by voting in President Ramaphosa without any mutually agreed understandings of what reforms would be extracted from the ANC to reciprocate the support to elect the President.
The ANC must have chuckled all the way to the Union Buildings last June, after having lost the most in the elections they managed to win the most in the negotiations leading to the establishment of the government.
If you are still not with me, read the GNU statement of intent. It is a document that spells out general principles and values that are sufficiently broad to be agreeable to all, even when parties have diametrically opposing views on how those values should be realised.
So, when the statement of intent says the parties agree to “rapid, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth,” every party in South Africa can agree to this principle while having diametrically opposing ideas on how to achieve this.
The reason why the GNU is nearly nine months into its existence without a single noteworthy reform addressing the greatest challenges facing South Africans, is because there was never an understanding of mutually agreed reforms underpinning the arrangement. The GNU was a power-sharing arrangement and not a shared programme of action responding to the most pressing needs of South Africans.
Look no further than a pearl of wisdom from a GNU minister who, in a podcast this week with Tshidi Madia, said “I think something that needs to be put on the table is a coalition agreement that actually deals with that trust deficit.” This ‘revelation’ must be the logical equivalence of “don’t run with scissors.”
Had any of the GNU partners had the mental acuity to produce a coalition agreement up front, before electing the President, the GNU may not be the incoherent mess that it has become. Had such an agreement spelt out policy reforms, legislative reviews, budget priorities and how the President exercises his constitutional prerogatives (like when appointing ambassadors), perhaps the GNU may have accomplished a reform to show for the past nine months.
Perhaps the greatest shock in this process is that the ANC’s partners in the GNU were so ridiculously naïve in their trust of a party, whose track record has not exactly warranted blind faith, that they thought these matters should not have been put in writing and agreed to before electing the President.
As a matter of fact, the subservience of partners in the GNU to the President was a major part of the problem from the very beginning of this GNU government. When it came time to announce the cabinet, the ANC managed to dupe its partners into accepting the principle that the President appoints the cabinet and that they must simply accept what they are given.
Seemingly, nobody in the GNU had the fortitude to point out to the President that while such constitutional powers are vested in the head of state, they arise from multi-party support—making them more of a shared responsibility than a unilateral exercise of authority.
And this problem has permeated throughout the GNU from its first moments until now, nine months later to the extent that the GNU continues to be an implementing agent of failed ANC policies. This is precisely why NHI, BELA and the Expropriation Act were able to continue their passage without obstruction and like nothing had changed in government – because nothing has!
Cadre deployment remains the practice of the ANC within the South African government, BBBEE continues to underpin the government/economy interface despite its evident failures and corruption-implicated ministers are rotated from one ministry to another.
Speaking of ministers, we continue to have too many, with a record 76 cabinet members enjoying greater luxuries and perks than ever before.
The civil service continues to account for 52c in every rand expended by our government and the cost of debt servicing accounts for another 21c in every rand – and the solution of this government to these challenges remains, as before, to tax South Africans more without any austerity measures of its own.
It is hard to cut the GNU partners some slack on this simply because they are new to government. Most, quite literally, have never served a day in their lives and are frankly wet behind the ears for such an elderly bunch.
The consequence of this naivety is, in terms of the first law of gravity, inertia – an object (in this case government) will continue at constant velocity unless acted upon by an external force. This, ahead of everything else, should be what concerns the country most because there is nothing acting upon government to change in the manner that voters required of it in the 2024 elections.
This is the reason why several months since the GNU policy lekgotla, there are no legislative, policy or directional changes in government to address the economy, unemployment, small businesses, crime, corruption, illegal immigration, healthcare or any of the other great challenges facing South Africans.
The era of political parties having to put aside differences to work together for the South African people is clearly upon us and will be with us for many years to come. Arising from this obvious reflection should be the understanding that we need political parties and leaders who are able to extract reforms in exchange for their involvement in government and not for them to prop-up status quo governments in a country where the status quo has been rejected.
Naivety At The Heart Of Stagnant GNU Government
It is rare in South African politics that something can emerge to be so self-evidently true that the recognition of it as such transcends above the usual fault lines.
To make it more relatable to well-adjusted non-political folk, let me provide this example. When you buy a car or a house, you do not negotiate by telling the seller what your highest offer is because you would be giving away your negotiation leverage. This is obvious to most people.
And yet, this is exactly what all former opposition parties did when they entered the GNU by voting in President Ramaphosa without any mutually agreed understandings of what reforms would be extracted from the ANC to reciprocate the support to elect the President.
The ANC must have chuckled all the way to the Union Buildings last June, after having lost the most in the elections they managed to win the most in the negotiations leading to the establishment of the government.
If you are still not with me, read the GNU statement of intent. It is a document that spells out general principles and values that are sufficiently broad to be agreeable to all, even when parties have diametrically opposing views on how those values should be realised.
So, when the statement of intent says the parties agree to “rapid, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth,” every party in South Africa can agree to this principle while having diametrically opposing ideas on how to achieve this.
The reason why the GNU is nearly nine months into its existence without a single noteworthy reform addressing the greatest challenges facing South Africans, is because there was never an understanding of mutually agreed reforms underpinning the arrangement. The GNU was a power-sharing arrangement and not a shared programme of action responding to the most pressing needs of South Africans.
Look no further than a pearl of wisdom from a GNU minister who, in a podcast this week with Tshidi Madia, said “I think something that needs to be put on the table is a coalition agreement that actually deals with that trust deficit.” This ‘revelation’ must be the logical equivalence of “don’t run with scissors.”
Had any of the GNU partners had the mental acuity to produce a coalition agreement up front, before electing the President, the GNU may not be the incoherent mess that it has become. Had such an agreement spelt out policy reforms, legislative reviews, budget priorities and how the President exercises his constitutional prerogatives (like when appointing ambassadors), perhaps the GNU may have accomplished a reform to show for the past nine months.
Perhaps the greatest shock in this process is that the ANC’s partners in the GNU were so ridiculously naïve in their trust of a party, whose track record has not exactly warranted blind faith, that they thought these matters should not have been put in writing and agreed to before electing the President.
As a matter of fact, the subservience of partners in the GNU to the President was a major part of the problem from the very beginning of this GNU government. When it came time to announce the cabinet, the ANC managed to dupe its partners into accepting the principle that the President appoints the cabinet and that they must simply accept what they are given.
Seemingly, nobody in the GNU had the fortitude to point out to the President that while such constitutional powers are vested in the head of state, they arise from multi-party support—making them more of a shared responsibility than a unilateral exercise of authority.
And this problem has permeated throughout the GNU from its first moments until now, nine months later to the extent that the GNU continues to be an implementing agent of failed ANC policies. This is precisely why NHI, BELA and the Expropriation Act were able to continue their passage without obstruction and like nothing had changed in government – because nothing has!
Cadre deployment remains the practice of the ANC within the South African government, BBBEE continues to underpin the government/economy interface despite its evident failures and corruption-implicated ministers are rotated from one ministry to another.
Speaking of ministers, we continue to have too many, with a record 76 cabinet members enjoying greater luxuries and perks than ever before.
The civil service continues to account for 52c in every rand expended by our government and the cost of debt servicing accounts for another 21c in every rand – and the solution of this government to these challenges remains, as before, to tax South Africans more without any austerity measures of its own.
It is hard to cut the GNU partners some slack on this simply because they are new to government. Most, quite literally, have never served a day in their lives and are frankly wet behind the ears for such an elderly bunch.
The consequence of this naivety is, in terms of the first law of gravity, inertia – an object (in this case government) will continue at constant velocity unless acted upon by an external force. This, ahead of everything else, should be what concerns the country most because there is nothing acting upon government to change in the manner that voters required of it in the 2024 elections.
This is the reason why several months since the GNU policy lekgotla, there are no legislative, policy or directional changes in government to address the economy, unemployment, small businesses, crime, corruption, illegal immigration, healthcare or any of the other great challenges facing South Africans.
The era of political parties having to put aside differences to work together for the South African people is clearly upon us and will be with us for many years to come. Arising from this obvious reflection should be the understanding that we need political parties and leaders who are able to extract reforms in exchange for their involvement in government and not for them to prop-up status quo governments in a country where the status quo has been rejected.