GNU rules the house, but can it rule the country?

Alameen Templeton

South Africa is limping towards its annual opening of Parliament with the National Assembly building still shuttered in ruins and its MPs putting on a brave face, preparing to celebrate 30 years of democracy in downtown City Hall.

Tonight’s opening will see the launch of Cyril Ramaphosa’s “Government of National Unity”, which is a faint shadow of the GNU launched under Nelson Mandela’s leadership. Julius Malema’s EFF and Jacob Zuma’s MKP, the main, disaffected voices of the national discourse, remain on the fringes the parliamentary floor.

Presently, Ramaphosa controls the floor, but it remains to be seen if he can translate that into effective policies and leadership to control the country.

Arraigned alongside his ANC are nine other parties that garnered just over 70% of the vote in this year’s election – the DA, the Patriotic Alliance, the IFP, the Good party, the PAC, Freedom Front Plus, Rise Mzansi and Al Jama’ah.

The GNU has been described as a “business friendly” alliance, whose main goals are aimed at getting South Africa working again after over a decade of state capture under Zuma’s leadership.

Business leaders have made it clear what their hopes are – getting the economy growing at more than the tepid 1% it is eking out presently. A 5% growth rate is touted as the goal because that’s where the economy starts employing more job seekers than it produces every year. That should start cutting down the eye-watering levels of unemployment, currently tickling 40%, according to some measures.

“In the last while, this economy has been growing at roughly 1% levels. Those levels are certainly below population growth rates, which then means that on a per capita basis we are collectively getting poorer as a nation,” Mfundo Nkuhlu, chief operating officer at Nedbank, recently told Eyewitness News.

Structural complaints like the cost of energy, food, reliability of electricity supply, serviceable roads and rail, and reliable water supply will need to be urgently addressed.

Transport and logistics chains are on life support, particularly after the pandemic, and need urgent attention to get goods from areas of produce to ports to try boost exports and South Africa’s perennial balance of payment problems.

Whether Ramaphosa’s GNU will stand up to the test remains to be seen.

Political commentators have described the other parties in the GNU besides the ANC and the DA as “DA-light”. They’ve decried the absence of voices representing the poor and others disaffected with the mainstream.

In his inauguration address, Ramaphosa invited “all parties, civil society, labour, business and other formations to a national dialogue on the critical issues facing the nation” to as he said, “forge a social compact to realise the aspirations of our National Development Plan”.

But can such a social compact become a reality without the EFF and MKP participating?

Malema has promised he will be less confrontational on the Parliamentary floor, apparently preparing to leave that role to MKP’s new members. But he’s made no similar promises outside the House.

Klaus Kotze, writing in the Mail&Guardian, says the GNU needs to “commence from the recognition that in South Africa there remains a deep and systemic impasse, an unjust and unsustainable situation in which persisting inequities have not found appropriate redress”.

Can the GNU do this while the EFF and MK remain out in the cold?

Political analyst Mzwandile Manto kaB. Wapi says “we cannot continue as if the poor and the downtrodden do not exist. Without them, the portrait of our national interest is incomplete. For this reason, if the name implies the agenda, then a government of national interest (not unity), is apt and more convincing label for the new government.”

Zuma and MK have taken the SABC to court for “misusing” the term “GNU”. They insist, as long as they remain excluded, that there’s no real unity in this government.

Of course, the ANC would say that it is the voice of the masses, of the poor, but this is a message that over the years has lost potency and legitimacy.

Endemic corruption, flagging service delivery, rampant crime and a splutting economy remain formidable challenges that threaten to leave nothing but garbage in the wake of the ANC.

The ANC says the two outliers have only themselves to blame after refusing to take up offers to join the GNU. ANC spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri has said the party had “repeatedly reached out to the MKP with no positive response” but emphasised that the door for discussions remain open.

Analysts accuse MKP of fumbling coalition talks in KZN where it garnered 45.35% of the vote. Nevertheless, it still insists the GNU is a “sellout deal” as Ramaphosa has effectively shut out the MKP and “black parties” like the EFF.

How boisterous tonight’s proceedings will be will probably be seen as an indication of things to come.

Some see parallels between the broken, burnt and still-in-ruins Parliamentary building and the wider country as the government battles to fix the structure more than two years after it burnt down.

Parliamentary officials negotiating the reconstruction are worried the old façade might not survive attempts to fix it. Others are worried that the GNU may also turn out to be a “spaza job” rearranging the make up on the national façade while the structural problems remain.