It is time to fire the eight “other” parties in the GNU.
Their presence is neither necessary nor helpful. It robs the country of crucial opposition voices and is holding South Africa back.
It is time to let the ANC and the DA govern the country together as the two parties that got the most votes, can deliver stability and have essentially struck a deal to lead. All the others are, essentially, useless noisemakers and they should by rights be ashamed to be in an arrangement where they are neither needed nor can add real value.
After a year of the GNU, it is time to reflect honestly. Is this arrangement working, and who is it working for? How can we strengthen it? How can it deliver more and better for the people of South Africa?
In this context, what exactly do the good people of Al Jama-ah (it got 0.24% of the national vote in May 2024) bring to the GNU and to the people of South Africa?
Why is the PAC, with just 0.23%, rewarded with a ministerial position — and what has the minister of land reform delivered in a year of work?
What is the GOOD party good for in this configuration except for the fact that it scored a ministry?
Outside the ANC (40%) and DA, which won 22% of the vote, we have a coalition that has the parties mentioned above plus the good people of the IFP (3.8%), the PA (2%), the FF Plus (1.4%), the UDM (0.5%) and relative newbies Rise Mzansi (0.4%).
To my mind they were invited into the GNU to ensure that the DA can be told, by the ANC: “You can walk out the door but we will still have a government, rickety as it may be.” Which is well and fine, but after a year it is clear that this isn’t working on many levels.
This arrangement was a power play and part of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s attempt to replicate his mentor and hero Nelson Mandela’s 1994 GNU. It was a brilliant idea 31 years ago. It will always be lauded as a masterstroke of post-conflict nation-building. But Mandela needed to unite a nation. Ramaphosa must fix a fundamentally broken economy.
For that he needs an agile, lean and capable cabinet that is not put together to make a choir of newfound political allies happy. How many times does one have to say this: what are we doing with 34 ministers and an astounding 43 deputy ministers? Seriously? What we need is a small team of focused, hardworking ministers and senior civil servants who want to leave a great legacy — not people who want a salary and a pension.
With 10 parties in the mix, the GNU has too many priorities.
Ramaphosa is working on keeping it together, not on ensuring that unemployment comes down drastically and the economy grows substantially. He is a prisoner of political calculations instead of delivery to the people of South Africa.
To remove this clutter of priorities, this cacophony of vested interests, he needs to remove these eight other parties and deal with the DA alone. The two parties are aligned in many ways anyway: they want power, they want to be seen to do well, and they are focused on doing all these things before the next election. Why do they need to have Rise Mzansi in the GNU?
Bantu Holomisa of the UDM and Patricia de Lille of GOOD are some of the best opposition MPs the new South Africa has had. Brett Herron of GOOD, Songezo Zibi of Rise Mzansi and others are continuing their incredible work. They should not be in the GNU. They should be holding this government to account from the opposition benches. Right now, their voices are mostly stymied by being in this gargantuan, unworkable coalition arrangement. It is time to set them free.
Crucially, it is time to set the ANC and the DA free to make the GNU work — or fail. Whatever happens, South Africans would then have a clear choice in the 2029 election.
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