‘Government of National Unity’: The Markets, the Mess and the Masses

‘Government of National Unity’: The Markets, the Mess and the Masses

Two important things need to happen to move beyond the contestation of forming a Government of National Unity. It is the acceptance that we have a collection of minority parties. We don’t have a “winning party”.

The second is to accept, despite the formalities and rhetoric, that what we see happening are coalition discussions, not GNU discussions.

From the outset the DA has been triumphantly clear: they are in the “GNU” to deliver on their mandate to their voters. The ANC has been a traumatic blob of confusion but wants to be regarded as “the elder among the losers”. There is no GNU charter. There is no clearly defined concept of “unity” in the documentation of intent.

There are only simplistic decision-making processes agreed to about intent. South Africa is watching the horror of the politics of the stomach and the politics of arrogance in a boxing ring with each other.

The DA is dominating the GNU conversation by treating it as its Moonshot Pack V.02. In that role, it serves as the senior partner. It acts as the winning party and treats the ANC as the losing party. Its false claim is that it has brought the ANC below 50% plus 1.

The ANC has been reduced to the embarrassing role of the black boy in the white DA master’s kitchen. This image is fuelling an alternative political awareness that will not end well for South Africa.

These poor attempts at a peaceful transition of power in South Africa ignore the rumbling voices of concern that are gathering within the ANC, at Nkandla and across the country. These rumblings will force South Africa down a path that will be akin to a new liberation Struggle to defend the defeat of the apartheid state and white minority control of South Africa.

It began with the DA treating the GNU negotiations as coalition discussions. It was then further fuelled by the DA acting as if it was the winning party. It finally sank down a hole when the DA said it wanted to advance its party mandates in the ministries it controls. That’s not a GNU. That’s a parallel alternative government by subversion.

I have bemoaned the fact that the ANC, by not having more scholarly negotiators in the room to face the DA, is its greatest, and potentially, fatal weakness. I said last week that the ANC had not grown its actual voting numbers since 1994. The only spike happened in 2011 under Jacob Zuma.

The GNU is not the salvation we think it is. It is a respite before the storm. With large-scale urban and rural poverty, low school completion and high youth unemployment rates, I hear opposition commentators already saying, ‘We will need 30 years to fix the ANC’s mess’.

For those who still think the markets will tell us if we are on the right way, I say: ignore the masses at your peril.

Cyril Ramaphosa is not only a weak president. He is a weak negotiator. One should not be impressed by occasional flashes of courage amidst his litany of weaknesses.

Had a Thabo Mbeki or a Mavuso Msimang been in the room to negotiate a GNU, the DA’s opportunism would have been short-lived. I however don’t blame the DA for wanting as much as it can out of these GNU negotiations.

It’s what happens when you sit opposite a weak opposition who just suffered an election bloody nose and uses stomach politics to make a deal with power politics. The ANC has appeared continually weak and in disarray during these GNU discussions.

While we watch the markets and the political movements within the GNU discussions, we would be foolish not to watch the ongoing mobilisation of the masses. John Vorster and PW Botha assured South Africa that they were on the right path to peace through numerous shenanigans like homelands and referendums. They underestimated the mobilising masses. These are not unity negotiations. These are ransom demands. The markets dictate it. The masses are seeing it. I see a massive storm brewing.

* Lorenzo A. Davids.

** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media

Cape Argus

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