Build One South Africa leader and former DA head Mmusi Maimane was recently appointed chair of parliament’s appropriations committee. He tells the FM he wants to see more budget oversight — and shares his thoughts about priorities for the government of national unity (GNU).
What is your view on the GNU?
MM: The first thing is it is loosely a coalition between the ANC, the DA and the IFP, and the reason to frame it that way [is] that — contrary to the GNU of 1994 under Nelson Mandela — if either of those parties walked away, it wouldn’t work. The second thing is, it has certainly given a different perspective in terms of how parliament itself operates. And so, on a personal level, I’m most grateful that the coalition that is the GNU has allowed me to chair the appropriations committee, which makes it a multiparty feature, but also allows for more effective accountability.
What should the GNU’s priority areas be?
MM: There are four. One, how do we move from a state where we’re growing at just 1%? That has been the average for the past 10 years, and all that’s meant is that 60% of our money is spent on the social wage. So that’s a challenge.
The second is how, having done the hard work around electricity and having no load-shedding — and I think that’s been a massive positive — we maximise the dividend around the transition to more sustainable energy.
Third is logistics. [There’s been] poor delivery, both on passenger rail, which is people’s ability to get to work, and on moving goods in and out of the country. For South Africa to see improved GDP growth, we’re going to need to do that.
That speaks to the more crucial question about how we do infrastructure build and manage our finances. We already are heavily indebted as a country, so our highest spend at the moment is on debt costs ... Countries borrow, but what you cannot do is borrow to live; you’ve got to borrow to build, and borrowing to build requires that you build sustainable infrastructure, and South Africa isn’t doing that.
I want President Cyril Ramaphosa to succeed; we have to give confidence to people to believe in democracy, or at least to re-engage with democracy and democratic institutions. But [to do so] in the sense in which there is a dividend behind government arrangements, otherwise you can end up with a GNU à la Zimbabwe 2007, and all of us know who and what Zimbabwe is.
I want President Cyril Ramaphosa to succeed; we have to give confidence to people to believe in democracy, or at least to re-engage with democracy and democratic institutions
Do you think there will be more accountability in the seventh parliament?
MM: [The absence of an absolute-majority party] allows parliament to have a much stronger role in being able to hold the executive to account. There’s also competition among cabinet members, but there’s also a sense in which parliament is trying to assert its authority as the body that holds the executive to account. Now suddenly the Money Bills & Related Matters Act becomes a piece of legislation that becomes powerful, because [it] empowers the appropriations committee to make adjustments to the budget.
We’ve got to be conscious, as South Africans, of the fact that we may have solved the politics by forming the GNU arrangement, but what we haven’t solved is our economic plan.
How does the appropriations committee work and why should South Africans watch this committee?
MM: The only way parliament can pass the budget is that the appropriations committee, through the money bills act, is the body that is tasked with processing it, in essence. So you should care because it is an instrument created by law to give oversight to the budget. It is the tool that the law established to offer suggestions and amend the budget through a legislative process.
Communities come to parliament — to the appropriations committee — and say: “Our submission is that more money must be spent on health or ECDs [early childhood development programmes].” So the appropriations committee does that work and it gives effect to public consultation and makes amendments, as various committees can come and make submissions to the portfolio committee to ask for more money.
It was a frantic two weeks before the recess in July, with a raft of bills passed by parliament. What was your committee’s role?
MM: We caught ourselves in the busiest time and we had to get to grips with the budget and get on with it. We did multiple briefings with Treasury, the Financial & Fiscal Commission. We also dealt with the parliamentary budget office and we did public consultations and received a number of submissions.
The budget votes had to be debated, adopted by parliament. We had to, in the two weeks, do all of that work, compile a report, and then have it debated for parliament. Then look at each budget vote, starting from the presidency (vote 1) to parliament (being vote 2), all the way to 41. So it’s been a busy two weeks, as the time allocated [meant] it felt like we almost had to plunge into the deep end.
The next cycle comes through, which is the medium-term budget policy statement, and that has to be based on the fiscal framework or the macrostrategic framework. We’ve already invited the auditor-general and the National Student Financial [Aid Scheme] to engage them and understand why there is underfunding.
As a former leader of the opposition in parliament, you have had a close-up on the importance of this role. Do you think former judge John Hlophe and the MK Party are up to the task?
As the leader of the opposition, you know the role that you fulfil; you’ve got to produce an alternative viewpoint that helps build society. And I sometimes feel that much of it can be brought down to the settling of scores rather than an alternative vision for South Africans.
So, in the case of Hlophe ... Is that motivated by appointing the best, or by a score-settling exercise?
So, in the case of Hlophe there is a legitimate argument that the same parliament impeached the person and now it is the same parliament from where he wants to go to the Judicial Service Commission, and deal with the appointment of new judges. Is that motivated by appointing the best, or by a score-settling exercise?
What is your view on the “progressive caucus” in parliament, consisting of the MK Party, the EFF, the ATM and others?
MM: It’s sad that the term “progressive” has been used that way. It leans on, if you were to rethink the history of black consciousness — and this issue is a historical one — the fight for the progression of black South Africans and their inclusion. The difficulty is that two parties, MK and the EFF, in their pronouncements, want to make us believe that they are pro-poor. But in practice, if you look at the history of many of the parties, be it VBS [Mutual Bank], be it [that] some of the characters in MK have [allegedly] been involved in state capture in president Jacob Zuma’s cabinet, that is a regression of society; it cannot be a progression of society. So to call yourself a progressive caucus is unfortunately a name that, in my view, feels bastardised.
You are arguing for a more centrist caucus?
I want to build a centrist caucus because the future of South Africa cannot be a seesaw effect between a diminishing ANC and a rising MK ... In a society that is fast polarised, I would want to urgently commit us to building a society upon which we can say to ourselves: “How do we uphold the ideals of nonracialism, the ideals of an inclusive economy and growth, a sense upon which we have ethical leadership at all levels, and we don’t have to be discussing the skeletons of people, but rather discussing the very competence that they bring to the stage?”
So while there may be a GNU and a progressive caucus, we must build a centrist caucus of South Africans who hold that view. And what we aim to do is ensure that accountability is not a function of a contestation of race, but that it is indeed a contest of ideas in parliament, because that’s what politics is at the end of the day, and it should be a marketplace of ideas.
What is your assessment of how your party fared in the elections? Were you disappointed in the results? And what lies ahead, given that we have local government elections in 2026?
This was a unique election, and of course I’m disappointed in certain respects, I would be the first to admit that. But, having said that, we were 19 months old, and we’re probably the least-funded political party. When I look at other parties in the same league that we were — so if you think about Rise Mzansi, ActionSA — I thought we held our own, which was an important thing.
We’ve built the infrastructure across the country. How about being able to say now, Build One South Africa? And how do we build this constructive voice in parliament? ... We are working right now to identify candidates for local government who will be under Build One South Africa.
* This interview has been lightly edited for clarity
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