GNU: Parties need to ‘tone down’ issues or SA loses – analyst

Grandstanding, posturing and bad moods marked a week in politics that’s presented a fruit salad to voters who wanted change.

But it could sour in coming days should parties continue with much ado about nothing.

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In a week in which the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) threw its toys out of the cot and uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) headed to the Constitutional Court to challenge parliament’s debut on Friday, parties need to pause for some serious introspection, said political analyst Dr Oscar van Heerden of the University of Johannesburg. In short, grow up.

Best of a bad crop

“If they do not act maturely and tone down their rhetoric and demands – and fail to reach an agreement – they will send us back to the polls,” he said.

Economist Dawie Roodt agreed. “Right now, South Africa is damned if they do, and damned if they don’t,” he said, adding that the hoped for ANC-Democratic Alliance-Inkhata Freedom Party marriage remains the best of a bad crop of options.

“There is just no win-win, whichever way you look at it,” he said.

The ANC is presently divided and fractious among its rank and file – and none of its alliance partners, nor eventually governing partners like the DA, will stand for a prolonged internal war at Luthuli House.

“As a minority government, if all else fails, the ANC will not cope. It will implode,” Roodt said.

Presently, there is too much posturing and repetitive exclamations over which party will or won’t get into bed with whom, or even play at all, Van Heerden said.

“Truth is, none of us knows what exactly is happening behind closed doors. Let’s hope that by Friday everyone has relented somewhat, calmed down, and President Cyril Ramaphosa has a mandate to constitute the executive branch of government.”

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Van Heerden also speculated what a new Cabinet might look like, based on recent machinations. He said ANC thinking usually matches position with objective, such as a trade unionist to run labour and communists who get to run social development.

This thinking will inform a government of national unity (GNU).

A likely award of departments to John Steenhuisen’s DA party would include the trade and industry, the police and public works, with deputy ministers in Treasury and law enforcement if the DA doesn’t get the top job.

“The DA will reject a poison chalice like public enterprises,” Van Heerden said.

The Patriotic Alliance will likely receive one or two benign departments like tourism and women and children, or social development.

“The EFF will get some of the scraps: director-general positions and could also be a contender for tourism.”

ANC ‘won’t give away one of the big 5’

Because a white deputy president might not be palatable to the ANC and its alliance members, the IFP could very well earn this seat, along with running human settlements, while a deputy speakership could go to the DA, along with a high-profile ministerial position for Steenhuisen.

It is unlikely, said Van Heerden, that the ANC would give one of the big 5 away.

Home affairs, defence, Dirco, justice and Treasury are likely redline areas for the former ruling party. If it all falls flat, another election could be the death knell of the ANC, said Van Heerden.