President Cyril Ramaphosa and his backers in the ANC must be feeling vindicated in their decision to go with the DA as a coalition partner rather than the EFF and MKP.
Ideologically, the president’s opponents within the ANC often argue, it would have made more sense to work with the EFF and MKP as the three organisations share some common values.
However, Ramaphosa and his backers would feel that the experience of the first year of the government of national unity’s (GNU’s) existence has proven that going with the DA guarantees relative stability.
Would an ANC-EFF-MKP coalition government have survived a year, especially after the president signed three pieces of legislation that were opposed by his partners into law? Do you think Julius Malema would have remained in the Ramaphosa cabinet if the president had fired EFF deputy ministers?
He probably would have walked and immediately started agitating other parties for a vote of no-confidence.
Despite its constant complaining and intermittent threats to walk away from the GNU, the DA has over and over again proven that it has no such appetite or courage.
The latest tensions within the GNU, sparked by Ramaphosa’s firing of Andrew Whitfield as a deputy minister, at one point seemed like “the red line” that the DA often says would lead to the collapse of the government when crossed.
But after issuing the president with a 48-hour ultimatum to fire two ANC ministers and a deputy minister as a way of atoning for Whitfield, the DA on Saturday decided to stay in the government even though Ramaphosa had not given in to their demands.
Instead, the party said, its MPs would retaliate by not supporting the upcoming budget votes of the two ministers – higher education’s Nobuhle Nkabane and human settlement’s Thembi Simelane.
It further announced that it would be pulling out of the upcoming National Dialogue announced by Ramaphosa recently.
Though serious, the two decisions are a huge climbdown from the type of action John Steenhuisen and other DA leaders were suggesting would follow if the president ignored the ultimatum.
The DA pulling out of the National Dialogue, for instance, would not make the gathering a failure because, even though the DA is the second-largest political party in the country, the event won’t be heavily dependent on the participation of political parties.
However, the decision does create a new complication for Steenhuisen and other DA members in Ramaphosa’s administration.
In his capacity as agriculture minister, Steenhuisen serves in the interministerial steering committee set up to organise the national dialogue.
Were he to refuse to attend the committee’s meetings, that might be deemed as defying his boss, the president, which is grounds enough for dismissal.
So, unless the endgame is to force the president to fire Steenhuisen – instead of the DA walking out of government on its own – the agriculture minister has little option but to continue serving in the interministerial committee.
But judging by Steenhuisen’s public utterances, leaving or being fired is not part of the game plan because he believes the collapse of the GNU would be “a disaster” for the country and the economy.
If the current coalition is that important to him and his party, clearly it would take a disagreement far more serious than Whitfield’s firing for the DA to quit.
Besides, it would have been really hard for the DA to explain to its funders – who worked so hard in helping the party get into a position where the ANC would have to turn to it for a partnership to form government – that it walked away because a wayward deputy minister was fired for breaking government rules and protocol.
Though the 48-hour ultimatum turned out to be a damp squib, it has created a new headache for Ramaphosa.
By all accounts, the president has little leeway but to remove the higher education minister from his cabinet amid allegations that she lied to parliament about the composition of a committee she said advised her to appoint a group of ANC-aligned individuals to the boards of a number of sector education and training authorities.
But he would now have to be careful about the timing of the decision lest it be seen by his opponents in the ANC, ahead of an important national general council meeting in December, as him capitulating to the DA’s demand.
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