GNU coalition has blurred ideological differences

The South African political coalition experiment at the national level is facing challenges that might induce its disintegration. The limited time the legislative framework allows for a government to be formed did not give sufficient time for coalition agreements to be pragmatically negotiated.

The established precedent is that it takes almost 100 days to emerge with a sustainable coalition. Because political party manifestos are set policy positions and should ordinarily be the basis of any coalition agreement, sufficient time to strike genuine compromises is required.

The less than 50% performance in the 2024 elections by all parties forced a coalition government arrangement. This gave the ANC a political lifeline. With no clear mandate on who to coalesce with, a hostile relationship between the ANC and the MK Party-EFF complex, and the need to stabilise the fragile democratic order, avoiding further damage to the reputation of the ANC as leader of society, a coalition with a “market-friendly” DA-led opposition complex became inevitable.

Under normal circumstances, the coalition negotiations should have processed the vexing matters of foreign policy, what is in the national interest, national security, economic policy, international trade relations, co-operative governance and local government reform, energy security policies, and the national question. Instead, the constitution was invoked as a neutral platform to coalesce with, albeit with a hush-toned 60% outright consensus-driven process. Whatever the ANC and DA come to agree upon as policy, the rest are in a tag-along coalition relationship.

In policy terms, the coalition arrangement amounted to a profoundly pro-markets stance and a reassuring investor-friendly environment, representing marginal wins to the two main coalescing parties. The transfer of economic and social power, a still-to-be-resolved component of the ANC’s national democratic revolution, has been more or less left on the wayside. The GNU coalition has blurred the ideological difference between the ANC-led left-of-the-centre and the DA-led right-of-the-centre politics, yet accentuating the centre as a consequential safe space to craft a new “democratic alliance” in a conceptual sense.

The consequence of the GNU coalition might already be the creation of a conceptually true democratic breed by creating an ideological home for the eligible but non-participating voters, who are numerically more than those who voted, plus the politically homeless liberal centre voters that fluctuate between the ANC and DA. Since the 1994 democratic breakthrough, the influence of the global liberal order within the South African political and ideological space has come to rival ideological orientations that gained traction with the majority of “we the people”, simply because the liberal order flirted with the apartheid ideology.

Despite the undeniable contribution of countries that were on the east side of the Cold War, there have always been some in the ANC-led liberation movement who questioned whether the influence of leftist ideological positions is a uniformly good proposition for a post-apartheid South Africa. Yet even those who raised such questions typically ascribed the problems of leftist economic policies to the application challenges. With a near memory of ‘swart and rooi gevaar’ after the 1994 democratic elections, the nature of leftist economic thought was rarely questioned. Instead, its vocabulary would be craftily used to justify mandate drifts and shifts towards neoliberal choices.

The brute and somewhat inconvenient truth is that many of South Africa’s victories as a nation have come through its ability to build coalitions around its challenges

The ideological rifts within the ANC and the appeal of the MK Party-EFF node as a potential alternative force of the left and the almost ripe-to-disengage component of the South African Communist Party might erode the leftist support within the ANC. The intense fragmentation of political allegiances of black voters, and Africans in particular, with identity, class, and erroneous interpretations of left and right politics, creates an opportunity for a new political centre to emerge alongside the many fragments.

The relative calm in parliament, the growing respect of society as political mandate determiners, and general fatigue about anti-system rebellious rhetoric bode well for a society yearning for a democratic order that prioritises its wellbeing as the basis of politics.While the ANC-DA anchored GNU will increasingly become politically fragile unless the economic fortunes of the country start demonstrating its necessity where it matters, the political context will continue fragmenting, and further coalition arrangements which will weaken the centre of the state will be the order of the day. Indeed, capital and civil society movements will be winners in an emerging ideology-fluid state. Political parties, especially if the ANC continues on its disintegration and fragmentation path, will be reduced to in-parliament voting stakes, holding entities brought together by political party funding interests and less “we the people” interests.

With the absolute majority-governing party-state reality in a perfectly declining mode, creating a stable democratic order will increasingly be about building coalitions of uniquely South African polities or communities, each having a crucial role. Ultimately, the arrangements to govern each other that are eventually adopted must benefit “we the people”. It must ultimately be about the respect, promotion, protection, and fulfilment of the Bill of Rights promises enshrined in our constitution.

The brute and somewhat inconvenient truth is that many of South Africa’s victories as a nation have come through its ability to build coalitions around its challenges. What might be lagging in South Africa is the acceptance of the unquestioned belief that power in society is distributed unequally. Those with power or proximity to power as components of the elite in society are internally homogeneous, unified, and conscious.

The rise of elite autonomy, which is choked by a grossly underperforming economy and a capability-challenged state, is leading the calibration of a “democratic alliance” without merging political parties.

• Dr FM Lucky Mathebula is a public policy analyst, founder of The Thinc Foundation and a research associate at Tshwane University of Technology