Political temperatures were running high.
It was August 2017 and Jacob Zuma was facing a parliamentary motion of no confidence brought by Mmusi Maimane, the DA’s leader at the time.
With six months to go before the ANC’s elective conference at Nasrec, Zuma, who was out of the running, needed Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma to succeed him as ANC president. She would shield him from the onslaught he faced from both outside the tripartite alliance and within it.
It was the sixth no-confidence vote against Zuma, but the first in which a secret ballot had been allowed.
There was hope among opposition leaders that perhaps, this time, they would oust the most noxious democratic president in South Africa’s history.
But Freedom Front Plus leader Pieter Groenewald didn’t share the optimism.
He tells the FM: “I said the motion would not succeed. No-one believed me, but it didn’t. Thinking that the motion would succeed defied political logic. No political party in the world will allow opposition leaders to drive out their own, it makes no sense.”
Groenewald, now correctional services minister in the government of national unity (GNU), tells this story to illustrate how DA federal council chair Helen Zille miscalculated in demonising Gauteng ANC chair Panyaza Lesufi for driving the removal of the DA’s Tshwane mayor, Cilliers Brink.
This came after the Lesufi-led Gauteng ANC, given a bloody nose in the May elections, bucked the GNU trend to form a provincial government without the DA.
The problem for the ANC is that Zille has made it significantly more difficult to rein in the Gauteng leadership, even if it wanted to. The matter is being closely watched by ANC leaders across the country, many of whom were sceptical of the DA’s prominent place in the GNU to begin with.
Groenewald believes Zille’s approach is a dangerous route for any opposition party to take.
“That is an internal matter between him and the ANC … It is not wise to get into that space. It is counterproductive. You actually chase them into each other’s arms,” he says.
Groenewald is not wrong. Lesufi leads the strongest force inside the ANC opposing the GNU, and by fanning the flames Zille only strengthens his hand.
While Lesufi’s opposition to the DA’s role in the GNU has been loud and brash, Groenewald does not believe it poses an existential threat to the national set-up.
“I don’t think it’s a fundamental problem … We have been on study tours to Germany, which has been run by coalitions for many years … It does not mean if you have a coalition at national level that it must be the same at provincial or local level,” he says.
“It can be different at provincial level and if he [Lesufi] says he has the approval of national leaders, that is their business. I don’t interfere with the internal matters of the ANC.”
It does not mean if you have a coalition at national level that it must be the same at provincial or local level
— Pieter Groenewald
But Zille’s criticism is not limited to Lesufi; she recently described some FF Plus councillors in the Western Cape as “rogue”.
Relations between the DA and the FF Plus have been strained since the DA won outright control of the George municipality in by-elections in July 2023.
In the aftermath, it ditched its coalition partners, who had been running the council with it since the local government elections. FF+ councillors were removed from key posts.
In a tit-for-tat move, the provincial leadership of the FF Plus worked with the ANC to oust DA-led governments in Langeberg and Oudtshoorn, Groenewald says.
The party’s national leadership had to step in and negotiations between Groenewald and DA leader John Steenhuisen have been fruitful.
“We now have a concrete agreement on the table where we can stabilise those councils in the Western Cape, part of which is that we agreed not to break our existing coalition in the province … It is a concrete bilateral agreement between me and John, it will have to go to our party structures for approval but the idea is to stabilise local government there,” Groenewald says.
He sees the national GNU as relatively stable, at least until the ANC’s next elective conference in 2027. At that point, an ANC leader may emerge who does not see the value of the GNU in its current form.
On the other hand, some parties that are in the GNU now may want to quit if Ramaphosa is removed as president of the country after the conference, as happened with Zuma and Thabo Mbeki.
“It depends on the elective conference, who that president will be. I can’t say the GNU in its current form is going to last until 2029,” the FF Plus leader says.
And Ramaphosa staying on as the president of the country beyond that 2027 conference will also depend on the economy.
“Ramaphosa’s survival will depend on whether we as the GNU can grow the economy by then … If we have good economic growth, he can survive … but the economy will have to grow by at least 2% by 2027, otherwise we will have a problem and clearly other factions would prefer to bring in the MK Party; I doubt whether the EFF will still be a factor by then,” he says.
Groenewald’s view is generally echoed by other GNU party leaders.
For now, the GNU’s likely sell-by date is 2027, but whether it will survive until the 2029 general election will depend on the direction the ANC takes at its elective conference.
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