Steenhuisen on the DA and the GNU

The following speech was delivered yesterday by the Leader of the Democratic Alliance John Steenhuisen during an address to the Cape Town Press Club.

Good afternoon.

It is a great honour for me to be back at the Cape Town Press Club.

The last time I spoke here a few months before the election feels like a lifetime ago.

Today South Africa is changed. There is renewed hope. A sense of optimism. Light at the end of the tunnel.

But our future is far from secure.

Much depends on our new Government of National Unity.

If it succeeds, South Africa succeeds. If it fails, everything is imperilled – our economy, our security, our constitution itself.

So, I want to set out for you today the DA’s approach to the GNU. I want to explain as clearly as I can…

Why we are in it…

What our policy priorities are…and…

The approach we take to relations with the ANC in government.

Why we are in the Government of National Unity

30 years into our democracy, South Africa is in deep crisis, and in the wake of the election our country desperately needed a government able to chart a path forward.

We have normalised so much tragedy. But South Africa’s situation is not normal.

We have the highest unemployment rate in the world, outside of a war zone.

For almost 10 years, our population has grown faster than our economy, which means South Africans have been getting poorer and poorer.

As a consequence, millions of South Africans are trapped in poverty with no serious prospect of escaping it.

And state coffers are running dry.

But we cannot get further into debt as a proportion of our GDP, because if we do we will face economic catastrophe: sky-high borrowing costs, the defunding of basic services, collapsed infrastructure and all the grim effects these would have on the lives of our people.

Meanwhile, 27 thousand of our compatriots are murdered every year. Our kids can’t read for meaning. People who could be saved die in our hospitals instead.

I won’t go on, but I could.

I do want to make this point: It isn’t normal. And it isn’t acceptable. It is a disgrace.

So, the first reason we entered the GNU is that our country required it of us. How could we justify turning our backs on South Africa in its hour of need when the opportunity to make a positive contribution was presented to us?

The second reason we entered the GNU is just as compelling: the alternative for South Africa was just too ghastly to contemplate.

Let me remind you what I said to this Press Club in March this year, before the election:

“If the RET faction of the ANC, the EFF, MK and their small party proxies find a way to come together, South Africa will face an existential crisis.

If this Doomsday scenario comes to pass, there is every reason to be concerned that the 2024 election could be South Africa’s last free and fair election.

This is the binary we face in the election.

On the one hand, there’s the DA that is working to become the big, strong anchor party at the heart of a new multi-party government to rescue South Africa.

On the other hand is the Doomsday Coalition, composed of state capture rogues, VBS looters, and RET factionalists.

The side that wins will determine whether our country embarks on a fundamentally better path, or whether it accelerates down the road to ruin.”

Indeed, throughout the election campaign, I made it clear that while no one could predict the exact outcome of the election, the DA would do everything in our power to prevent the Doomsday scenario by keeping the EFF and MK out of power.

It would have been a kind of treason to hand South Africa over to people who would destroy it. We could not do that.

Our agenda in government 

Now that we are in the government, our responsibility is to meet the challenge of the hour, and help turn South Africa around.

But the DA in government cannot fix everything.

For a start, we have just 22% of the seats in Parliament. And even if we had an outright majority, South Africa is in such dire straits that any government would need to focus its efforts on a small number of critical priorities.

And so we have made a clear strategic choice.

Our single priority is economic growth and job creation.

Growth and jobs.

I’ll say it again: Growth and Jobs.

Because the economy is the engine that pulls the whole train forward. If we cannot get it going, nothing else will move.

And so, five years from now, we will judge ourselves on two simple metrics: is growth up, and is unemployment down?

Let me be clear: I am not going to allow anything to get in the way of ensuring growth goes up and unemployment comes down.

If that means causing a degree of distress inside the GNU, then so be it.

The people of South Africa are more important than the feelings of politicians.

And right now, the government is not gripping the economic situation with the urgency it demands.

The disjointed processes of government lumber on ineffectually while the country’s situation cries out for action.

And we are facing a very real fiscal crisis.

Over the past 10 years we have squandered half a trillion Rand bailing out failing state-owned enterprises.

Now revenues are again falling short of projections, and we have used up some of our reserves.

Meanwhile we confront a situation in which it may be impossible to keep paying for all of our teachers. It may be impossible to save the Post Office.

And the list of things it may be impossible to continue funding will grow longer.

To make matters worse, growth is anaemic.  We registered just 0,4% in the last quarter, after 10 years of real-term per-capita GDP contraction.

And while we have made strides to boost growth via Operation Vulindlela, the truth is it is not enough, and not fast enough.

My colleague in the Treasury, Ashor Sarupen, and his colleague in DTIC, Andrew Whitfield, have worked up a clear set of immediate actions the government can take to bring spending down and increase confidence to lower the cost of borrowing.

We will take these proposals to the President and the Minister of Finance, and together work out the way forward.

Some of the urgent actions to contain spending include:

• A comprehensive, bottom-up spending review across government, to get rid of duplication and stop spending on programmes that don’t deliver measurable value.

• The conversation of the SRD grant into a Permanent Job Seekers Grant.

• The containment of public sector wage growth to CPI levels.

Some of the urgent actions to increase confidence and bring down the cost of borrowing include:

• Setting deadlines for the restructuring of ports, logistics and freight rail, and moving ahead with the concessioning of the Cape Town port.

• Bringing in private sector expertise to increase capacity at the Competition Commission Mergers and Acquisitions approvals are taking 24 months. The Commission’s performance plan requires them to take no more than 12 months. Our competitors take 4.

• Taking up the World Bank’s offer of a Regulatory Impact Assessment. They would do it for free, and it could free up businesses to invest, grow and employ.

• Getting SARS immediately to place Customs Officials inside all cigarette manufacturing facilities for monitoring production, which proved to be a success in 2019. National Treasury data shows that placing Customs Officials in manufacturing sites for 3 months resulted in an additional 1.06bn cigarettes being declared to SARS and an extra R900m excise being paid.

• Establishing an immediate review of all Parliamentary Master Plans to determine their performance against their intended objectives, and whether they are creating excessive constraints on productivity. Where possible, urgent amendments should be made to stimulate rapid growth that contributes to fiscal stability.

All of these measures would show investors and lenders that we are serious about growth.

But short-term measures to drive up confidence are not enough. Longer term reform is critical.

That’s why DA in government has made the choice to view every ministry and deputy ministry we have responsibility for through the prism of growth and jobs.

And so, for example…

In agriculture, we are working to enhance biosecurity, and I just led a successful delegation to China as part of work to rapidly open new markets for our farmers to create thousands of jobs in our rural communities.

Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber is transforming that much-maligned department by positioning it as an economic enabler.

Research shows that attracting more skills and tourism to South Africa can add up to 1.5% to annual economic growth and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.

Minister Dean Macpherson at Public Works and Infrastructure seeks to turn South Africa into a construction site, because the DA understands that infrastructure investment will serve as a catalyst to create jobs and grow the economy.

Minister Solly Malatsi is driving ahead on auctioning the spectrum and getting investment into this job-rich sector.

Minister Dion George is focussed on the just energy transition and the green economy, with the potential to unlock new kinds of jobs.

Minister Siviwe Gwarube is committed to protecting the funding for teachers, getting kids tested for numeracy and literacy in grades 3, 6 and 9 and maximising quality teaching time in classrooms.

Similarly, our Deputy Ministers in finance, trade and industry, energy, higher education, water and sanitation, and small business development are working every day to orient those departments towards creating jobs and growing the economy.

There can be no doubt that economic sentiment has taken a very positive turn because of the work that the DA is already doing in the Government of National Unity.

But we now need to move from increased confidence, to actual, measurable economic growth.

The DA’s approach to GNU relations 

Ladies and gentlemen, I want to move now to an explanation of the DA’s approach to relations with the ANC inside the GNU.

I want to be very clear about something. With 22% of the vote, the DA cannot get everything our own way inside the government. Actually, it would be undemocratic if we did. So I want our supporters old and new to accept that. It’s how democracy works.

Having said that, we will not accept a situation in which we get none of our priorities implemented. That, too, is undemocratic.

The fact is, we hold the balance of power in the GNU. Without the DA’s support in  Parliament, the government does not have a majority in Parliament.

So, fair is fair. We can’t get it all our own way, but neither can the ANC get it all their own way.

Our first instinct inside the GNU will always be to find common ground in the interest of South Africa. We have already proved this. We are working hand-in-hand with the ANC on every initiative that will take South Africa forward, and there is a long list of overlapping policies we have agreed on.

But what we will not do is shy away from conflict when we are confronted with serious and lasting damage to our country or to the Constitution that underpins our democracy.

And so, for example, we do not believe the President should sign BELA into law tomorrow. Among other issues, we believe the bill compromises the rights of children to mother-tongue education. That is why I met the President on BELA yesterday.

But if the President goes ahead tomorrow, the DA will have to consider all of our options on the way forward.

In a multi-party government leaders need to respect the constraints and imperatives of their partners. Any leader that tries to ride roughshod over their partners will pay a price, because a time will come when the shoe is on the other foot, and they will need the understanding of those same partners in turn.

The same applies to the NHI. Our first instinct is to find solutions to the aspects of the NHI plan that will do lasting damage to South Africa, and our ability to deliver healthcare to all.

If we can find those solutions collaboratively we would be delighted. If we can’t, we will pursue the interests of the South African people through every other legal means at our disposal.

It is of critical importance to understand that conflict over policy in a multi-party government like the GNU is normal and indeed necessary in a democracy.

And it is not necessarily an existential threat to the government.

Let me say that again: conflict over policy in the GNU is not necessarily an existential threat to the government.

But that doesn’t mean the DA would never walk away under any circumstances.

I set out earlier our view that the bottom line for the DA is an economy that grows and creates jobs. If the GNU can’t do that, there is no point being part of it.

Indeed, if the ANC insists on taking South Africa down the path to economic ruin, it would be the DA’s patriotic duty to leave the government and use our position in Parliament to stop the slide into catastrophe.

Similarly, if the ANC in government sought to compromise the Cconstitution, undermine the independence of key institutions like the Reserve Bank or do away with property rights, we will have no part in it. The DA can never in good conscience be party to an assault on the constitution.

And so, the DA will not crash the government unless the government is crashing the economy or trashing the constitution.

To summarise:

First, we seek common ground…

Next, we engage in constructive conflict…

Finally, we walk away, where severe and lasting damage is being done to the economy or the Constitution.

I trust that is clear.

In conclusion, and to those who want more of what the DA is doing in the GNU, I have a simple message: with more votes, we can do more.

Whether in our councils, our metros, our provinces or nationally, the DA can only do more with your support.

So strengthen our hand, and we will strengthen the country.

Thank you.