South Africa’s purported Government of National Unity (GNU) is, at best, an aspirational objective that requires national-level negotiations between various stakeholders within and without formal political institutions. Balancing the priorities of these various interests whilst reviving a sluggish economy will require further hard bargaining and the formulation of a developmental strategy that prioritizes industrial manufacturing. South African political elites must take cognizance of where they are if they wish to get where they want to be.
The current reality is a composite national political landscape bifurcated into a bipartisan core and multiparty periphery. Core members, comprising the African National Congress (ANC) and Democratic Alliance (DA), lead the arrangement. Eight other small political parties invited into the GNU present a picture of broad-based inclusivity; in reality, they occupy peripheral positions heavily dependent on ANC patronage.
The DA is certainly not above dispensing patronage to secure wider strategic interests. ANC-DA leaders allocated the premiership of KwaZulu-Natal to the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) to lock out Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) from provincial governance. Deprived of an administrative bailiwick from which to cultivate its following, through the distribution of sinecures and government tenders, the MKP will find it difficult to increase its support base.
In addition, the appointment of IFP President Velenkosini Hlabisa as Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs will tilt traditional Zulu leaders, eager to acquire greater politico-economic privileges, away from Zuma and towards an ANC-DA led dispensation.
However, the DA itself has been deprived of cabinet positions within Gauteng, South Africa’s main economic hub, after ANC provincial Premier Panyaza Lesufi formed a minority government comprising the IFP, Patriotic Alliance (PA), and Rise Mzansi. This configuration reduces DA leverage over national politics but will make it more difficult to provide essential services to black townships, plagued by high crime rates, power cuts, and water shortages, if opposition parties refuse to enter supply-and-confidence agreements. Furthermore, sub-national multiparty governments are notoriously unstable entities prone to generating voter backlashes against incumbents. If Lesufi’s team fails to deliver basic municipal services, their respective parties will be wiped out in the 2026 local government elections.
If South Africa’s municipal level dysfunctions are cast upward to national level, socioeconomic ructions will magnify accordingly. Officials at the Union Buildings are certainly aware they are playing for higher stakes and cannot afford to make as many mistakes. Nonetheless, the DA is operating under critical disadvantages that the ANC appears to be taking advantage of.
At a basic level, DA leaders have painted themselves into corner. If they walk out of the GNU, they will be courting the very doomsday coalition, formed via an ANC alliance with the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) or MKP, that they campaigned so vigorously against. Moreover, senior ANC officials have selectively incorporated leaders from the multiparty periphery into secondary ministries of an oversized thirty-two-member cabinet, bloated further by a panoply of largely ceremonial deputy ministers. Beyond the obvious pressures this will place on an already constrained fiscus, DA representation has been truncated under an aegis of inclusivity.
Critical briefs such as finance, police, and foreign affairs, remain within the ANC’s gift. Global investors view finance minister Enoch Godongwana as a safe pair of hands, amenable to neoliberal macroeconomic policies espoused by ostensibly more conservative politicians. Senzo Mchunu at police is essentially a party stalwart with no experience of law enforcement. This does not bode well for sorely needed police reforms.
Yet, it is unlikely the ANC would ever allow such a critical ministry to fall into the hands of another party while they hold the largest vote share. Unlike in Kenya, South Africa’s police forces are not a presidential praetorian guard. However, presidents and their police ministers have come from the same party since 1994. What little political capital the ANC has acquired in the last five years has come from its stand against Israel’s war in Gaza. No fundamental changes to foreign policy are expected under Ronald Lamola. How far this will shift the geopolitical balance in the Middle East is less clear. Moral authority aside, armed conflicts in that volatile region will not be determined by South Africa’s actions, and the DA appears to have acquiesced to ANC control over foreign affairs for the foreseeable future.
Cabinet posts for peripheral parties can generate greater instability, as they might eat into the DA’s electoral base in the Western Cape. The appointment of PA President Gayton McKenzie as Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture gives him an entrée into a lucrative tourism sector and has the potential to siphon off Coloured voters from the DA. The Western Cape’s poor increasingly view the DA as a white party with little concern for Cape Town’s impoverished non-white townships. McKenzie has proven far more successful in mobilizing a mass base in the Western Cape than Patricia de Lille’s ANC-aligned Good Party.
Helen Zille’s publicly voiced displeasure at the PA’s entry into the GNU may have scotched McKenzie’s ambitions to obtain the Home Affairs portfolio, which went to the DA’s Leon Schreiber instead. Yet, McKenzie now has an executive platform from which he can amplify his anti-immigrant, and to some extent anti-white elite, populism. He poses no threat to his ANC patrons but may do considerable damage to his DA rivals.
In all, the ANC has made the best of a bad situation. It has contained the impact of a DA entry into national government by drawing peripheral political elements into positions of executive power. Should DA leaders walk away from their subordinate position, the ANC might move to replace them with either the EFF or MKP. Although this inherent danger allows the ANC to retain more than its fair share of executive power, it provides little clarity regarding economic priorities.
An acquisitive elite must forego its proclivities to tax a stagnant economy for the sake of conspicuous consumption. Policymakers should instead put in place programs than will grow the economic pie and plough back profits into fixed capital formation. Public sector salaries need to come down and the ensuing savings must be invested into social services for the unemployed and working poor. Without a viable basic education system and trade schools producing larger quantities of skilled labor, South Africa’s economy will not take off. If the ANC does nor prioritize economic development over political dominance, it will suffer further losses in future elections.
Mesrob Vartavarian obtained a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge and has taught history and international relations at Harvard and Tufts. His publications have appeared in Africa and the Journal of Southern African Studies. He is currently teaching at the University of California, San Diego and writing a book on wealth concentration in South Africa for Ohio University Press.
This article was originally published by a democracyinafrica.org . Read the Original article here. .