ANC’s 100-day celebration of GNU falls flat amid internal strife

The ANC is big on anniversaries.

It celebrates its birthday every year with much pomp and circumstance and tipsy clinking of champagne glasses. It’s a somewhat strange habit. A big song and dance about simply surviving another year.

But then again, when a government has pitifully few tangible political achievements to celebrate, what else to toast but marking off another year on the calendar?

In a similar vein, the ANC on Monday celebrated the first 100 days of the government of national unity (GNU), which saw it enter into a de facto coalition with its previously despised enemies, the DA.

Held outside Luthuli House rather than a stadium, it was more funereal than celebratory. The customary exuberant call-and-response of “Amandla!” and “Awethu!” that punctuates any ANC occasion was muted.

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The assembled flesh might have been willing but the spirit was decidedly weak, despite the valiant cheerleading attempts of secretary-general Fikile Mbalula.

The off-key tone was set at the very beginning when one could see the lips of Cyril Ramaphosa and Mbalula moving out of synch with the rest of the crowd singing the national anthem.

A symbol perhaps of the discordance the GNU has caused in the ANC’s much-depleted post-electoral parliamentary ranks.

The SACP, which views itself as the intellectual engine room of the ANC’s tripartite alliance, refused to attend. Its stance is the GNU is a sell-out by the ANC of the alliance’s Holy Grail, the national democratic revolution.

Cosatu, too, didn’t attend. It said none of its office bearers were available to go because Cosatu had received the invitation “too late”.

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Mbalula tried his best to walk back from being the “celebration” the ANC had announced it to be. “We are not celebrating,” Mbalula explained unconvincingly. “We are reflecting.”

Ramaphosa gamely picked up the baton from Mbalula in his own address. This was most definitely not a celebration, the president said.

“Today, on this day of reflection … we affirm the ANC will continue to lead the fundamental transformation of our country and society. Whether [the GNU partners] like it or not.

“The ANC remains committed to ensuring that our manifesto, as adopted by the national executive committee, will be implemented.”

It seems not everyone got the memo. Supporters of Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi, who has challenged the GNU national agreement by refusing to cooperate with the DA at a provincial level, displayed anti-GNU, pro-Lesufi placards in a silent protest during the singing of the anthem.

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Mbalula, introducing the speakers, threatened the Lesufi-backing anti-GNU protesters with disciplinary action. Lesufi, who had half-heartedly gestured to the protesters to lower their placards, must have had a snigger to himself at this empty threat.

A week ago, he had forced Mbalula into a grovelling climbdown when the secretary-general had tried to “discipline” him for making anti-GNU statements.

However, Lesufi, now openly the central figure around which anti-GNU forces within the ANC are gathering, knows the brinkmanship game. He gently chided his supporters when it was his turn to address the gathering.

Contradicting both his president and secretary-general about the nature of the event, he said, “As we celebrate this milestone we must be wary of those doing wrong things. Comrade SG was right it must not be in our name that we undermine the leadership of this movement.”

Ramaphosa has hardly put a foot askew in the first 100 days of his tightrope walk to save the ANC from its own worst instincts: to ditch the GNU, and lurch left to embrace the EFF and MK.

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But his nerve-wracking journey has just begun.