US President Donald Trump’s monstrous, thumb-sucked ChatGPT import tariffs against the rest of the world (excluding Russia), including a wild 30% imposed on South Africa, coincide chillingly with President Cyril Ramaphosa reportedly arranging the departure of the DA from the government of national unity (GNU). If he goes ahead and reshuffles his vast cabinet, he’ll end up with a 10-party coalition with a majority of just two.
What could possibly go wrong? Ramaphosa, pressured by his party, clearly decided he’d had enough of the DA and its rebellion against a proposed VAT increase. But now there are possible second thoughts. Big business wants Ramaphosa and the DA to stick together. He doesn’t have to reshuffle at all.
I feel for home affairs minister Leon Schreiber, who has just signed a deal to begin using cutting-edge South African Revenue Service technology to facilitate the digitisation of visas and government services. By November, Schreiber was betting, you would be able to order your new passport online and pick it up from a bank, as well as obtain a tourist visa online from anywhere in the world.
But big projects need champions and, unless big business prevails, the GNU is dead — just as we face even more US hostility. A second South African diplomat has been expelled by Washington, and there’s an effort in Congress to impose sanctions on the country and individual ANC leaders linked to US enemies such as Russia, Iran and Hamas.
The DA pushed too hard in its VAT negotiating, however sensible its arguments may have been. It joined the GNU on rushed terms, totally unprepared for the ANC’s poor showing last year. But at one point last week the ANC was still taking new DA policy propositions seriously. Then Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA got Ramaphosa out of a jam and opened the way to the budget passing, meaning the VAT increase was able to go ahead without the DA’s assent to it.
Mashaba hilariously misunderstood what his man in parliament’s finance committee was doing. There’s an amusing video of ANC MPs imploring others in the room not to explain to the ActionSA chap that his breakthrough proposals were in fact merely an endorsement of the VAT hike.
If the coalition breaks, the DA will simply have to suck it up. I think it would be a good thing, as there’s no point being in a coalition if you can’t influence its policies — and, in any event, we would soon be at the same crisis point again. But the party would quickly need to do three things. First, it would have to elect new leaders, and the earlier the better. The GNU failure would belong to both leader John Steenhuisen and federal executive chair Helen Zille.
A new leadership race would ideally be between Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis and former Tshwane mayor Cilliers Brink. Hill-Lewis would possibly have more traction given that Cape Town is such a success. Current deputy finance minister Ashor Sarupen, or indeed Brink, would be razor-sharp successors to Zille.
The DA must develop a fresh vision for a country on its knees
Second, the party would immediately need to reshape its messaging and prepare for local elections late next year or early in 2027. The DA must develop a fresh vision for a country on its knees. It cannot dawdle.
The party must hold on to its base and try to embrace new or lost voters. The pitch would be simple provided the party’s inexplicable 2019 decision to scrap all mention of race in its policies is quietly ignored. This is South Africa — you don’t have to go ANC-lite to appeal to black voters, but you do need to recognise that the folks who get you from 21% to 26% probably want to hear you say what colour they are. Whites do it all the time.
The third strategy is also simple. The Steenhuisen DA incessantly communicates the growth message, but it never explains what growth is or why it’s a good thing. MPs defended the VAT increase last week by asking, “Where is the revenue?”
Economic growth is the unambiguous answer, but the DA never makes the case for growth, while ANC leaders are genuinely bewildered by it all because they always seem to have money. But the creation of new wealth is about first encouraging enterprise and investment, and then reaping the jobs and tax rewards that inevitably follow. In a poor country that has run out of answers, growth should be a compelling proposition, but it’s being sold by amateurs.
And while it’s time, whether it be in or out of the GNU, for fresh leadership in the DA, the party will at least be learning some tough lessons. That’s more than you can say for Ramaphosa — the biggest loser in the VAT war. He has already lost his NEC and his party, and I doubt he’ll see out his second term, whether he reshuffles or not. Politicians who lead from behind eventually get left behind, and we are now watching a greatly enfeebled Ramaphosa. He has lost his parliamentary majority, his senior coalition partner, his most valuable trading partner — and now, in slow motion, his power itself.
For opinion and analysis consideration, e-mail Opinions@timeslive.co.za
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