A government of national unity with the ANC and the DA as dominant partners was always going to be a rocky marriage.
The two hold diametrically opposite views on almost every aspect of governance. When it comes to the economy, for example, the DA believes in less regulation, market-friendly laws and allowing business to thrive with minimal state interference. The ANC believes in big government, increased state control and regulation to rein in over-exuberant market forces.
The DA boasts that where it's in power, it governs best — a point hard to argue against when you consider how well run the Western Cape and the municipalities under its control are. The ANC dismisses this as hubris, pointing out that claimed DA efficiency is only visible in affluent areas, with the consequent neglect of poorer areas. Also hard to argue against given the state of poorer communities in the Cape Flats and surrounds.
The ANC is convinced that at its core the DA is a party of the elite bent on preserving white privilege. In the eyes of the DA, the ANC is a narrow black nationalist movement that has destroyed everything it has touched over the past three decades.
But the results of the 2024 general election forced on these adversaries an uncomfortable marriage of convenience, marked by public squabbling and bickering in the nine months since its inception.
The two have fought over everything, from National Health Insurance to the Bela Act and the Expropriation Act. Tensions were bound to boil over at some point, and the 2025 budget became the ultimate battleground.
On Tuesday the DA steadfastly refused to support the fiscal framework that caps government spending and legislates changes to taxation. On Wednesday it joined the EFF and the MK Party in voting against the budget.
The main reason advanced was that they couldn't support a budget containing two 0.5 percentage point VAT increases over two fiscal years. But the true source of the disagreement has been the ANC's stubborn refusal to allow the DA co-control of economic policy.
For example, the blue party wants the management of passenger rail devolved to provinces. It seeks faster implementation of structural reforms, including signed commitments from the national government for the concessioning of key ports to the private sector. As a condition for supporting the budget, it sought to have its deputy minister of finance appointed co-chair of Operation Vulindlela, the Presidency-led initiative to remove bureaucratic blockages to economic reforms.
The budget was too important to be held to ransom by political brinkmanship
The nimble operation functions at a high level and has been credited with speeding up reforms such as opening freight rail lines to private operators, streamlining the visa regime to make it easier to attract skilled workers and deregulating electricity provision.
The ANC and the DA held a series of talks that almost culminated in an agreement, before a dramatic U-turn by the former, which led to it seeking the support of ActionSA and other parties outside the GNU to get the budget over the line. This suggests that the GNU in its current configuration is all but dead.
The impasse over the budget risked plunging South Africa into a national crisis, likely forcing the finance minister to invoke emergency measures that would allow departments and provinces access to only 45% of their previous allocations to keep critical programmes running. The budget was too important to be held to ransom by political brinkmanship.
Today we report that talks between the ANC and DA have resumed in the hope of salvaging the coalition, with both parties under pressure from business and funders.
It's a fact that this iteration of the GNU has been good for the markets. Now with Trump having detonated a tariffs bomb on the rest of the world and adopting a hostile stance towards South Africa, it would be ill advised for the two not to try to save this marriage through compromise.
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