Most other countries’ democratic political systems allow for months of horse trading over ruling coalitions. Belgium took 652 days, from December 2018 to October 2020. South Africa’s government of national unity (GNU) was essentially formed in two weeks, moving remarkably smoothly through its honeymoon period. Yet, despite the auspicious start, internal tensions within the GNU are inevitably starting to show.
To use the analogy of a horse race, we’ve cleared the first big fence, but others loom, and each brings the chance of a fall. Clearing them – and delivering the GNU’s agenda of economic growth and job creation – will require a level of collaboration beyond the capacity of “normal” party politics.
The clear risk of moving with such extreme haste in forming a coalition government is that none of these newfound partners has had the time to reflect on their new circumstances. Each party’s identity as it relates to the others – the self-image of a ruling party, or one in opposition – no longer holds. Those groups or individuals each party once demonised, are now bedfellows.
The clash of modern democratic politics is increasingly expressed as a conflict of identities, whether of competing ideologies, histories, culture or worldview. Identity conflict – where one’s own sense of identity is perceived to be under threat – elicits what psychologist and negotiation expert Daniel Shapiro calls the “Tribes Effect”: a mindset that is adversarial, self-righteous and closed. We saw signs in the early coalition negotiations, in a turf war over the right to call certain political agendas “progressive”, and to label others “reactionary” (really, a shorthand for nice or nasty).
We also need to avoid Shapiro’s “repetition compulsion” – a dysfunctional pattern of behaviour each actor is driven to repeat. Over the years of ANC government, and especially since 2009, when the DA won the Western Cape, the two parties have been locked in identity conflict. Not just the simplistic black/white racial distinction, with all the baggage that represents, but each has professed a moral and political superiority: one is corrupt, the other uncaring.
The ANC and the DA have been comfortable painting each other in absolutist terms, and may judge that it has served them well so far. But what happens when this pattern of behaviour becomes self-defeating?
As the GNU moves forward, there will be many occasions for disagreement where the various parties within government could turn on each other. The first of these has been the division over mother-tongue (read: Afrikaans) education in clauses 4 and 5 of the Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela) Act. The next – playing out at this moment – are the power struggles in Gauteng’s metros, especially Tshwane. However, an attack on the interests of one of the two major parties within the GNU is ultimately an attack on the GNU itself. The ANC and the DA know this, but will that be enough to stop repetition compulsion?
Early warnings
As the GNU parties consider how they can work together, they must also think about how they might be pulled apart. Like parties in an emotionally charged conflict, such as the bickering couple triggered over a seemingly innocuous incident, they need a strategy for breaking this repetition compulsion – or it will break them. Such a strategy will allow them to catch it at its earliest moment, and choose a different path.
A three-part early warning could help the GNU parties:
First, understand your particular conflict’s trigger; what behaviours or events provoke a threat response for you, or the other side? For the ANC and DA in particular an obvious trigger is their respective concepts of state and the private sector – with the extremes of wholesale privatisation vs nationalisation or expropriation, used by opponents to caricature the reality of more nuanced positions. Each party is highly alert to anything the other may say or do, which then triggers a threat response.
Second, what cycle of conflict then evolves? Who confronts whom? How? And how does it usually end? For most of us, the pattern is well worn. For opposition parties in South Africa, the tendency has been to head to the courts. In government, national or local, the ANC has simply not had to listen to or accommodate others. The result has been “lawfare” and service delivery protests. An example of the ANC/DA cycle of conflict in action is playing out in Pretoria where the ANC has succeeded in a motion of no confidence against the DA-led administration, which claims this is really about vested interests in waste management contracts.
However, understanding the triggers and mapping the cycle of conflict is not enough to prevent its recurrence. One also needs the third element: an ability to understand, appreciate – and in some cases, quantify – its impact.
Some in the GNU may believe they can continue to fight as before, but the stakes are now much higher and the potential impacts of a different order. The politicking in Tshwane will not be contained there, as before. It will have a provincial and national impact too. There is now definite public expectation that each party should adapt to their new circumstances. As the parties strategise, working through these elements – trigger, cycle and impact – could help forestall the inevitable blowups and prevent devastating escalation. DM