(Image: Daily Friend / Wikipedia) It’s amazing how fast change happens in politics when it does happen, and how long you have to wait for it to happen when it doesn’t happen. Vladimir Lenin touched on this point when he remarked: “There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen.”
South Africa has gone from wondering whether the ANC will lose its absolute majority to wondering what will happen now that it has lost its majority to wondering who will be part of the Government of National Unity (GNU) to wondering if the GNU will fall apart before it begins to wonder what will happen since it hasn’t. But now at last we can look up a bit and think about a future that extends beyond next week. And there is a lot to think about.
The first question, for me at least, is whether this formulation of government will result in bitter stasis or enhanced functionality. You could ask the same question in a different way: which do you prefer — limited government or decisive government? Yet another formulation would be something along the lines of this: is your model for success Singapore or the US?
The US Constitution is famously a document founded on a suspicion of overarching government and consequently is constructed around “checks and balances”. Despite criticism for enhancing governmental gridlock, generally speaking, it has served the US well. The government of Singapore is an odd mixture of democratic and authoritarian. But that system too has served its citizens well, at least economically. There are plenty of examples of opposites, too, and graduations along this spectrum.
In SA’s case, we are living at an interesting moment in time. SA is transitioning from a government in decisive control to a government in mediated control. Imagine, for a moment, how debates in the Cabinet are going to go down. With the best will in the world, they run the risk of being testy affairs.
Let’s say the new communications and digital technologies minister, Solly Malatsi, wants to scrap the decision to split the SA Post Office from the Post Office Bank on the basis that it was a transparent effort to create an avenue for tenderpreneurs to loot taxpayers’ money following the sad demise of VBS. Is that a “policy” decision that must go to the Cabinet? Or is it a functional decision which should be made by the department?
And so on.
The parties signed up to a broad agreement and there is a dispute-resolution process. But clearly, there is considerable change on the way. It’s worth just asking at the start what the different parties are hoping to achieve.
I think for the ANC, the GNU forms part of a strategy to get the economy back on track, or at least minimise the economic downside, and possibly also reduce the more egregious examples of corruption. If the party manages to do that, then it’s presumably hoping the credit will flow to it rather than to its partners. And if that happens, the chance it will return to unconstrained power is high.
The danger for the ANC is that either the economy does not rebound, or that it does but the credit goes to the coalition as a whole, or even to the nature of the GNU as a whole.
The DA, I suspect, hopes that its participation in government will make it seem a legitimate choice to black South Africans. The DA is, as we all know, locked in a racial laager and has struggled to draw support outside white, mixed-race and Indian-descent South Africans. Perhaps this will change that perception.
The danger for the DA is the danger all minority participants in a coalition government face: they alienate their existing supporters as they are forced to accept policies their supporters deliberately voted against. The DA has a trump card; it can pull out of the GNU. But it’s a trump card it can only play once.
For the smaller parties, one of the aims of participating in the GNU will be moving more squarely into the public consciousness. The danger is that history will repeat itself; parties that participate in government beg the question of their supporters: Why not just vote for the main party?
The role of the EFF and MK is the simplest of all and it’s one they are very familiar with: be loud and oppositional. The danger is that they seem irrelevant, carping and destructive. But that is a danger all opposition parties face. The fun part will be seeing how the EFF and MK distinguish themselves not from the GNU but from each other. Given that MK has adopted the bonkers economics of EFF, what does the EFF do: become more bonkers? Or less bonkers?
The best part of the Cabinet appointment process has been that it demonstrates that President Cyril Ramaphosa does indeed have a sense of humour by appointing former convict Gayton McKenzie as the minister of sport, arts and culture. I mean, c’mon, that is funny. Can’t wait for the party. DM