ITSHOKENG KEKANA

The formation of a government of national unity (GNU) created the expectation that coalition politics would force moderation.

In theory, no single party would be able to fully impose its own agenda or policy direction, especially in a diverse country like SA where political compromise is necessary for stability.

The hope was that such an arrangement would prevent extreme policy swings and encourage co-operation in the national interest.

Instead, the GNU has exposed a level of political disorder and public frustration that appears to have been building for years.

Rather than creating a united governing culture, it has highlighted a growing disconnect between political leadership and ordinary citizens, with political parties increasingly talking past one another instead of addressing the country’s core problems collectively.

The formation of the GNU after the 2024 election reflected how fragmented and dissatisfied the electorate had become. No single party secured enough support to govern comfortably on its own, which was a strong indication that many South Africans were unhappy with the country’s direction and wanted political power to be more distributed.

In that sense, the GNU emerged as a political necessity and as a symptom of broader national pressures.

Voters themselves were sending different messages at once. On one hand, there was frustration with the governing establishment; on the other, there was no overwhelming consensus about what should replace it.

In a functioning democratic environment, the GNU could have represented an attempt to prevent deeper instability while encouraging compromise and reducing a “winner takes all” political culture.

Coalitions are often expected to moderate politics, but in practice they can also expose how deep the underlying fractures were. The instability is not necessarily created by the coalition itself.

Rather, the coalition can reveal tensions previously concealed by one party’s dominance. Yet coalition governments are often difficult and messy by nature, and SA’s experience has shown how fragile co-operation can become when trust between parties is weak and political competition remains dominant.

It may be too early to determine whether the GNU will ultimately succeed. Its success depends on whether it becomes more than a power-sharing arrangement and genuinely addresses the conditions that produced voter frustration in the first place.

When disagreements constantly spill into public battles, citizens may begin to conclude that governance has become secondary to political rivalry.

That shift carries serious political and social consequences. Once people lose confidence in long-term plans, manifestos and institutional promises, politics becomes less about collective national vision and more about immediate rescue from present hardships.

Citizens stop asking which leaders can gradually build sustainable systems and instead begin asking who can provide immediate relief from current suffering.

This creates fertile ground for reactive politics. In societies where trust in institutions weakens, people often become less patient with gradual and honest reform. They become more attracted to leaders or movements that project urgency, decisiveness and disruption, even when the proposed solutions are unclear or unsustainable.

It also changes voter behaviour itself. Elections become increasingly emotional and reactive, shaped more by frustration, fear, exhaustion or desperation than by confidence in a stable political future.

What makes this especially dangerous is that once citizens lose confidence that leadership is acting in the national interest, trust in democratic institutions can weaken even further, making political instability more difficult to reverse.

The real danger is not simply political disagreement, but the slow erosion of belief itself. A democracy can survive conflict, criticism and even instability, but it struggles to survive when citizens no longer believe institutions, leaders or elections can meaningfully improve their lives.

Once politics becomes entirely about survival and immediate rescue, long-term national vision begins to disappear. SA now stands at a point where the GNU will ultimately be judged not by the symbolism of unity or the survival of political parties but by whether it can restore public confidence that the government still exists to serve the people before political competition consumes the trust that holds the democratic system together.

If that trust collapses completely, the country risks entering a cycle where anger replaces participation, desperation replaces patience and democratic processes themselves begin losing legitimacy in the eyes of ordinary citizens. That is what makes this moment so important.

Once trust in institutions collapses deeply enough, anger starts replacing participation, desperation replaces patience, and elections themselves become less about hope for the future and more about punishment for the present.

In that environment, societies become increasingly vulnerable to populism, reactionary politics and leaders who promise certainty without sustainability.

The greatest threat then is no longer disagreement between political parties but the possibility of a society slowly losing faith that democracy itself is still capable of delivering stability, dignity, accountability and meaningful change.