It is almost impossible to know exactly what is happening, or when — but I’m pretty sure that after last week’s inconclusive national elections the ANC and the DA are an inch away from concluding a deal to go into a coalition that will also include the IFP.
An inch and a thousand miles away. We cannot know. Any deal between the negotiators for the two parties requires the approval of the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) and the DA’s federal council. What is on the table is a full coalition and not a so-called confidence-and-supply arrangement, where the smaller party agrees to keep the bigger one stable in a minority government.
For both parties, the risks are enormous. South Africa is not a quick fix, and even though the DA is the only party that can on its own supply the ANC with a parliamentary majority, parliament doesn’t run the country, and it isn’t much on the ground.
With 18 parties in parliament, a GNU is impossible and merely buys him time to get the big job done — he either secures NEC backing for a deal with the DA or he has nothing
A coalition between the two would be met with considerable hostility in some parts of the country, making the inclusion of the IFP vital, and perhaps an offer of the deputy presidency, or the creation of a second deputy presidency, for IFP leader Velenkosini Hlabisa is inevitable.
The DA negotiating group’s rejection of a confidence-and-supply arrangement is clear from the “framework for multiparty government” it released on Friday the framework is extremely mild — mostly it merely proposes implementing what is essentially ANC policy anyway.
Protect the constitution, establish an effective and corruption-free public service, put in place a sustainable fiscal framework, and implement a series of energy, logistics, visa and property-title reforms that are already either ANC policy or about to become so in terms of the Operation Vulindlela task teams in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office.
The framework also makes a pitch for devolving railways and some policing authority to the metros, and that’s about it. There are no demands for specific cabinet seats, and my impression is that, should talks ever get that far, the DA would not want portfolios that come with large numbers of public sector employees. So that means no to health, education or social development.
The party would probably bid for water, energy, local government and public works. In parliament, it would obviously seek some committee chairs and the speakership.
This forbearance asks very little of an ANC eager to re-elect Ramaphosa and get back into government. What the ANC gets in return is stable leadership of the country for at least the next two election cycles. The ANC’s 40% (even 30%) and the DA’s 20% would be hard to budge if they are able to strike a deal now and get the economy at least sitting up in bed in the next year.
The ANC with the EFF and, say, the Patriotic Alliance (PA) would battle economically. For the ANC, it would be a prescription for extinction.To feed popular revolutionary narratives, it may be useful to follow the current advice of a former ANC intelligence officer I can’t name.
“When you are down and out and prostrate with 42% unemployment, load-shedding and water-shedding,” he wrote this week, “you engage in a dialectical relationship of collusion and collision with capital. It’s called common sense. Or national interest.
That’s exactly what Deng Xiaoping did after the ravages of the Cultural Revolution, when China was prostrate. [He] cosied up to the West [and] rebuilt his economy, and when China was strong enough ... it bared its fangs at the West, asserting its geopolitical claims.”
Ramaphosa’s announcement on Thursday night of an NEC decision to form a government of national unity (GNU) was meaningless. With 18 parties in parliament, a GNU is impossible and merely buys him time to get the big job done — he either secures NEC backing for a deal with the DA or he has nothing.
One problem is the DA wants nothing to do with the EFF or the PA.
A more critical risk, though, is the future of KwaZulu-Natal. Jacob Zuma’s MK took 45.3% of the vote in that province. It is unthinkable that he should gain control of this vital economic hub, and together the ANC, IFP, DA and local NFP could stop him. The EFF’s two seats cannot help Zuma or the ANC, but without the DA there’s no formal majority to keep Zuma at bay. And if the DA isn’t in a national coalition, how is KwaZulu-Natal to be secured?
These are perilous times. Poor decisions in the next few days could see us back voting within a year.
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