You Can’t Have Your GNU Cake And Eat It Too

As South Africans we have had a lot to adjust to with the loss of an ANC majority in June 2024 and the consequent advent of the GNU government.

Of relevance to this piece has been the failure of political parties within the GNU to leverage their support for the ANC to extract reforms to the benefit of the South African people or to deliver on their campaign promises of old that now seem to have evaporated.

In particular, the failure to extract critical reforms prior to the election of the President placed all power in the hands of the ANC and established an Oliver Twist–styled “can I have some more sir” power dynamic within the GNU.

As a consequence of this short-sightedness, parties in the GNU have been left to use their ministries to deliver whatever they can within the narrow confines of the limited policy setting space a minister enjoys.

This is why Pieter Groenewald is now exclusively a raider of prisons and a ribbon cutter for bakeries rather than someone announcing much needed reforms in our correctional services. It is why Leon Schreiber is re-launching initiatives for partnerships with the banks to process ID applications that were launched in 2016 and not addressing the mountains of undocumented people in our country. It is the reason Local Government Minister and IFP President, Velenkosini Hlabisa’s only response to the crisis in local government is a white paper while municipalities still only receive a meagre 9% of the national budget. It is why Gayton McKenzie tweets about the arts more than he does anything to actually expand government’s support for it.

Notwithstanding the fact that some, not all, of these micro changes are positive, they are the proverbial drop in the ocean in the context of a country that needs serious reforms to address disaster levels of unemployment, crime and inequality. Until major reforms are delivered in the area of the economy and criminal justice systems, the needle will barely vibrate from the work of a few ministers that report for work. This concern found embodiment recently when Fikile Mbalula posted his pride for the 1.1% GDP growth achieved in 2025.

It begs the question, how is this GNU government being run? It would seem that critical Ministries run by ANC Ministers like Finance, International Relations, Police, Justice, Trade & Industry and Defence continue to run like they are the preserve of the ANC, as if there wasn’t an election that removed the ANC majority less than two years ago.

In any productive coalition environment not only would there have been an agreement detailing the agreed reforms, but this would have been made public. Instead South Africans are left trying to deduce what changes will or won’t arise under this government as GNU lekgotlas are held which are reported as successes, but no actual specifics about reforms ever seem to arise.

What all of this has created is a deceptive sleight-of-hand where GNU parties appropriate and misappropriate credit for the limited changes that they can achieve within the narrow policy setting perimeters of their ministries while, with a straight face, acting as opposition simultaneously to their fellow partners in their own government. The deception lies in the manner in which these parties attempt to be fish and fowl at the same time to deflect from the irrefutable fact that the fellow minister of another party that is failing or corrupt can only fail or be corrupt with the support of the other parties in the GNU.

Of course, underpinning all of this is the rather patronising narrative that, as South Africans, we should all just be so teary-eyed grateful to these parties who heroically prevented a doomsday coalition from taking root. Whatever your view on this is, the reality is that South Africans have serious challenges that are going to require more than gratitude to be addressed and their aspirations are greater than “cheer up, it could have been worse.”

Perhaps the most astonishing part of this picture is the fact that parties continue to get away with it as they associate and disassociate from the GNU based on whatever is expedient in that circumstance without being called out. How long will the media and members of civil society continue to applaud politely as parties in the GNU take their own government to court for its collective decision-making or when they release statements or speeches denouncing the behaviour of their own fellow ministers that they were backslapping at a cabinet meeting an hour earlier.

In a coalition parties must be jointly and severally accountable for what emerges, or doesn’t emerge for that matter from that government because that government couldn’t exist without the collective. Parties in the GNU understand this principle because when controversies arise in coalitions elsewhere, they are quick to brand all of the parties in that coalition as culpable. It seems that parties in the GNU are special and not subject to the moral scrutiny of others, that they shouldn’t be held accountable for the collective performance of the government that they have enable. After all, they could not possibly be expected to use their positions to leverage the change that they promised during the 2024 elections. Right?

Perhaps now adopting the philosophy of “if you cannot beat them join them” opposition parties have taken on the behaviour of the same ANC ministers they used to oppose. The fight against South Africa’s ridiculously large cabinet has been silenced. Ministers take their spouses on publically funded ‘Baecations’ even when their parties used to condemn such conduct in the past and non-performance is now defended.

Despite all the PR in the world, this GNU government is objectively failing. Our economy has not grown and no economic policy directional changes have been announced much less implemented. Our criminal justice system is more broken than it was before and it is business as usual in that department. The fight against corruption remains on life support as the powerful connected elite remains untouchable one commission of enquiry after another. One would be forgiven for saying that despite being the biggest losers in the 2024elections, the ANC has gained the most by being allowed to continue like nothing changed,

Until parties in the GNU withhold their support for the continuation of this failing national government and condition the resumption of their support for an agreement on real reforms, all we have is a multi-party delivery platform of the same failed ANC agenda that voters removed from office two years ago but with better Public Relations.

ActionSA Electoral Growth: Expanded quickly into KZN and the Western Cape.