The inauguration of President Cyril Ramaphosa is a significant shift in South African politics. It marks a decisive departure from the past 30 years of an absolute majority governing party dispensation to a multiparty coalition government.
This new arrangement allows the seventh administration leadership to operate outside dogmatic party-political obligations. It elevates the importance of the constitution as a framework through which party mandates and interests would be realisable.
Ramaphosa took an oath of office and accepted the responsibility of leading a national consensus on unity, growth and development. The statement of intent, misconstrued as an agreement between the ANC and the DA, is a broad enough framework to accommodate all political parties committed to the liberation promise in the constitution.
The hegemonic prevalence of what the ANC has always stood for is intact as what undergirds the statement of intent
This is one of the few documents to define areas of hegemonic contestation directly out of the constitution. The public is at the centre of new and future efforts of the government of national unity (GNU). The concept of “We, the people” is finding practical expression. The constitution ascends to its supreme law throne and will dictate the cadence of politics. It is now about who better delivers on the liberation promise in the constitution.
The agreement’s reference to a professional, merit-based, non-partisan, developmental public service that puts people first is a clear indication that the parties to the GNU recognise the centrality of a capable state for the arrangement to succeed. This commitment is a reassurance that the government is dedicated to having effectively co-ordinated state institutions committed to the public good and delivering high-quality services. Despite its omission of the need to pursue South Africa’s national interests, an overarching statement that guides foreign policy activities, it has been able to respect, protect, promote and commit to fulfilling the Bill of Rights.
The GNU is about institutionalising the democratic, political, constitutional and economic order. The judicial authority of the republic is regulated through a professional environment and insulated from the overt pursuit of interests. The legislative and executive authority has been the exclusive domain of an absolute majority party for a while. The economic authority of the republic has been kept to be an abstract and amorphous domain lumped into the proverbial “market”. The GNU, as the agreement reads, aims to demystify the market as a nonstate authority with the power to establish and disestablish regimes.
The hegemonic prevalence of what the ANC has always stood for is intact as what undergirds the statement of intent. The profoundly liberal character of the agreement, reflective of a growing orientation in the broad church the ANC has declared it is, might be one of the statement of intent’s attractions to liberal parties. This might explain why those stuck in ideology are growing into its enemies on the one hand, and those believing in the power of ideas support it to the extent that it creates thematic platforms for options to be considered. What might require intense attention is the public education of citizens about the minimum principles of the statement of intent.
In crafting the national dialogue agenda, which the minimum programme of priorities already provides broad thematic areas to structure a social compact with, the famous “what should be done” questions should enjoy less attention in favour of the “how do we do it” ones. The power of the ANC’s 40% majority in the GNU is the most easily recognised, widely accepted, and ardently embraced political currency of the seventh administration.
The inconvenient acknowledgment and progressive removal of the ANC as No 1 from the dock of the corruption trial, which is liquidating the opposition complex’s moral hold on the hegemony of good governance and the rule of law, will evaporate with the success of the GNU. This might be a strategic renewal move by a Ramaphosa ANC presidency.
The GNU is not immune to the seismic shifts internal to the ANC. But even as the ANC has lost ground, the gap between it and the MK Party-EFF complex has, and because of the GNU decision, only grown. Parties that have organised themselves as the Progressive Caucus, most of whom are ANC breakaways, have become the new opposition node whose success is directly linked to the socioeconomic transformation commitments of the national dialogue partners and the GNU’s implementation prowess.
Although the premium appeal of the ANC as a liberation movement is shifting commensurate with the influence or natural attrition of its struggle generation, the inherent strategic acumen of ANCness is improving its ideational resilience and hurting its new rivals even more. Turbulence in the political economy of South Africa, even if triggered or exacerbated by the ANC’s carelessness and negligence, has thus far spoiled the ANC and enhanced its position as the nexus of political life.
The ANC should approach the national dialogue process wearing its liberation movement hat. Its ideational prowess should be convened first, residing among those of its members who are its activists in ideational spaces. They are its reserves when it comes to sustaining its relative hegemonic strength.
The ANC is not new to this context; it might be its first in the condition that it is simultaneously a governing party and liberation movement. It has already organised the diverse middle class, chiefs and kings into a native conference in 1912 and formed itself, masterminded a Bill of Rights in 1923, the African Claims document collection process in 1943, a Congress League Programme of Action in 1949, the Congress of the People in 1955, the Harare Declaration, Codesa and the 1994-1996 Constituent Assembly. The national dialogue of 2024 is a continuation of an illustrious legacy. The momentum still favours what it stands for; use of the K-word by the DA MP serves to show how relevant the need for GNU is to the ANC’s programme of translating the liberation promise into a lived reality.
• Mathebula is a public policy analyst, founder of The Thinc Foundation, and a Research Associate at Tshwane University of Technology.
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