GNU teeters on brink – again

In the course of the 115 turbulent years that SA has existed as a unitary state, the budget invariably passed like clockwork. The ANC-led government of national unity (GNU), in contrast, has had to table the budget three times in two months because the DA and its smaller allies would not support a VAT hike.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has warned that while the ANC would not expel the DA from the GNU if it didn’t vote in favour of the budget, the DA would have excluded itself by doing so.

DA leader John Steenhuisen said the DA wouldn’t stay in the GNU if were reduced to being “mere supplicants” while the ANC “shopped around” outside the GNU to achieve a majority.

But even if the GNU does survive to limp along, it’s clear it cannot deliver on its primary purpose. That was to meld a governing party that had fallen on hard times with its electorally stalled opposition rival in a de facto coalition that would put aside divisive political rhetoric to find pragmatic solutions to SA’s plight.

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Indeed, the GNU has all worked out very well for the ANC. Far less so for the DA or South Africa.

Abroad, Ramaphosa has punted the GNU for all it’s worth. At Davos, the United Nations, and in other international forums, Ramaphosa lauded the GNU as a testament to Nelson Mandela’s vision of inclusivity and cooperation to much admiration and acclaim.

The DA’s participation has also been gold to diplomatic efforts in the US to counter the Trumpian narrative of dispossession and impending genocide.

At home, the president has repeatedly assured his sullen comrades that the GNU was just window-dressing. There would be no need for policy compromises or adjustments to the course that the ANC set over the past 30 years.

On the upside for the DA, individual DA ministers have excelled in their portfolios and this may be translating into improved electoral support for the party, according to surveys. It will presumably also pay future electoral dividends that the DA has opposed a phased one-point increase in VAT while the ANC has supported it.

ALSO READ: Budget vote fallout: Is the DA’s future in or out of GNU?

On the downside, the initial impression one had of the DA’s place at the GNU table has proven to be correct. This never looked like something to gamble big money on. Aside from the game being brazenly rigged against it from the outset, the DA was dealt a lousy hand that it bid recklessly and at times played poorly.

The DA believed the budget was the “red-line” issue, to which the ANC would have no answer. “[But] the reality is that every other party in the GNU can vote for the budget but without the DA it won’t pass,” Steenhuisen told me in a discussion a few weeks ago.

“The ANC, only now, I think, over this budget thing, [are] starting to realise that after 30 years they don’t have a majority. But there is still a lot of muscle memory that demonstrates itself from time to time.”

Those confident predictions have come back to haunt the DA. The ANC could and did cobble together a parliamentary majority out of the rats-and-mice parties, likely by offering whatever chunk of cheese it knew would do the trick.

All the pre-GNU warnings that the ANC is temperamentally and ideologically incapable of compromise, or acting in good faith, have been shown to be accurate.

As Steenhuisen and the DA now know, the ANC’s muscle memory, even when the party’s on its last legs, still packs a powerful punch. Especially below the belt.

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