S’THEMBISO MSOMI | GNU remains unhappy marriage but it’s up to ANC, DA to sign up for divorce or work harder at union

Though the approval of the Appropriation Bill in parliament on Wednesday means that the government of national unity (GNU) has survived yet another scare, we should start now preparing ourselves for life beyond an ANC-DA dominated coalition government.

It sounds counterintuitive to even think of a future break-up just a couple of hours after a behind-the-scenes deal demonstrated just how prepared President Cyril Ramaphosa and DA leader John Steenhuisen are to bend over backwards to make the current arrangement work.

But the reality is that the immediate future of the arrangement remains precarious and not entirely in the hands of the two leaders.

Yes, the relationship between Ramaphosa and Steenhuisen is crucial to keep the GNU afloat, and its most recent crisis – sparked by Ramaphosa’s decision to fire a DA deployee as a deputy minister – could have been averted with better communication and co-ordination.

However, what the crisis showed us is that each of the two politicians is under intense pressure from within their constituencies not to be seen to give in to the other.

While it might have been obvious to Steenhuisen that Ramaphosa was within his rights to remove Andrew Whitfield as deputy minister of trade and industry after the latter went on an unapproved visit abroad, he knew that accepting the decision without a fight would cost him the backing of Whitfield’s power base – the DA structures in the Eastern Cape.

This, just less than a year before the party holds its next federal congress – where Steenhuisen would be seeking re-election – would make him vulnerable.

Hence his pushback, initially suggesting that the DA would walk away from the GNU, and then later threatening not to support aspects of the Appropriation Bill unless the president also fired the higher education minister, Nobuhle Nkabane, and her human settlements counterpart, Thembi Simelane.

While, as we later saw, Ramaphosa was not averse to axing at least one of the two ministers, he had to be careful not to appear as if he had done so purely because of DA pressure as that would have further eroded his political authority over an ANC that is growing frustrated with his alleged “soft treatment” of the DA.

Hence, he delayed what was an inevitability – the firing of Nkabane because she had misled a parliamentary committee and generally came across as undermining the public.

But when he finally thought that enough time had passed since the DA’s demand for the link between it and his eventual actions to be plausibly denied, he acted – sacking Nkabane while retaining Simelane. This enabled Steenhuisen to change the DA’s position on the Appropriation Bill without losing face.

As a result, the GNU, in its current configuration, remains intact. But for how long?

The precarious nature of it all can be best illustrated by the fact that the ANC has postponed meetings of its national executive committee (NEC) more than once, apparently out of fear that the majority of the NEC would vote for the DA to be kicked out of the GNU.

According to a report by Lizeka Tandwa in last week’s Sunday Times, a study commissioned by the NEC’s working committee puts forward five options for the ANC.

The first is to remove the DA and then invite Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA, Mmusi Maimane’s Bosa and the National Coloured Congress to be part of the national executive. The second is to retain the DA but add the three other parties to further dilute its influence within the GNU.

The third is for the ANC to enter into what is termed a “supply and confidence” with Julius Malema’s EFF in which the red berets would commit to not backing any vote of no confidence against Ramaphosa in return for key roles in parliament. The fourth option would be for the ANC to form a minority government and then hope no-one brings a vote of no confidence against it. And the last unlikely option would be to dissolve the government and call for fresh elections.

What is clear is that though big business and major funders of the two parties are putting enormous pressure on the ANC and the DA to stay in the unhappy marriage out of fear of the alternative – what Steenhuisen calls a “doomsday coalition – internal party dynamics are pushing the two further apart. Sooner or later, something has got to give.

Sometimes a divorce bodes well for the future rather than staying in an unhappy marriage and being held hostage by the fear of the unknown.

Of course, the ANC and the DA should keep on working on the relationship, if that is what they want, but they should not pretend that they are doing it purely for the sake of the citizens.

With or without the GNU in its current form, as a Kendrick Lamar-inspired Dr Malusi Gigaba once said: "We gon’ be all right.”

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