If the disagreement over VAT was the only issue dividing the ANC and the DA, it would have been sorted out long ago. What it revealed was a GNU floundering on visceral mistrust, poor strategy and self-interest.
The irony is that there is surely no dispute in the GNU about the most important goal for the country: a strongly growing economy and a significant drop in unemployment. How to put in place the conditions for growth? And how to cut or divert public spending to support them? These are practical matters and can surely be negotiated through policy compromises by both sides.
Perhaps there are lessons to learn from the recent history of Southern Africa.
Chester Crocker was the US assistant secretary of state for Africa who facilitated negotiations in the late 1980s to end the war in Namibia and Angola.
On the face of it, he was dealing with two implacably opposed foes: the apartheid regime of president PW Botha, and the alliance of the Namibian guerrilla movement Swapo, Angolan and Cuban forces, and Soviet advisers. Attitudes on both sides had been hardened by a decade of bitter battlefield losses and incompatible ideological positions.
In the talks, Crocker sought to prevent confrontations built on past resentment and cast-iron agendas. Instead, he tried to identify areas of common ground, however small and tenuous, and then build on them. He stressed that each side needed to acknowledge the other’s “deep narratives and identities”. As mutual trust increased, so did the areas of agreement, and the list of non-negotiables steadily shortened.
In the case of the GNU in 2025, the DA and ANC are far closer together now than were the antagonists in the Namibia/Angola war.
However, there is an obvious leadership problem on both sides.
There are visibly two centres of power in the DA — or rather, two persons of power: the federal council chair, Helen Zille, and the nominal leader of the party, John Steenhuisen.
Zille is arguably better equipped to lead. She has substantial experience of the nuts and bolts of political power, having served as mayor of Cape Town and as premier of the Western Cape. She is a formidable strategist and a respected negotiator. Is the wrong person dealing with President Cyril Ramaphosa in the GNU?
On the ANC side, Ramaphosa is already a lame duck. He cannot serve another term as national leader, and a new party leader could be elected in 2027 — not in 2029, when the next general election is due. Unlike the US president, who is elected directly by the people, the South African president is, in effect, appointed by his party. He can be “recalled” at any time, and the spectre of former president Thabo Mbeki’s humiliating exit in 2007 — two years before his second term was over — surely haunts Ramaphosa and perhaps paralyses him.
This may be the ultimate irony. Democracy in South Africa was made possible by two leaders, Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk, who had courage and a readiness to risk alienating some supporters, while displaying an ability to see the other side’s point of view. Now we need leaders just to agree on how to build an economy to sustain democracy — and we cannot find them.
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