Insiders oppose the DA getting too big a say in government

As the Government of National Unity (GNU) threatens to be stillborn, the ANC is under pressure to abandon the DA altogether, even at this late stage, and establish a government with other parties, including the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party and EFF.

ANC insiders echoed President Cyril Ramaphosa’s complaint, addressed in a letter to DA leader John Steenhuisen, that the second-biggest party was trying to set up a “parallel government” working outside the constitutional principle establishing the GNU.

Serious opposition to giving DA critical security cluster portfolios

There was said to be serious opposition within the ANC to giving the DA critical security cluster portfolios, as well as those such as trade, industry and competition (DTI), which regulated the country’s international trade and various business practices and malpractices.

Those opposed to the agreement said that if that department was given to the DA, it would be was tantamount to surrendering economic power to capital and the neoliberal agenda.

There was also concern that if the DA headed up the DTI, it would discriminate against certain countries it regarded as enemies, such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea in favour of the West and its allies.

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Resistance to DA demands growing

The insiders said the ANC was consulting on the issue, but the resistance to the DA demands was growing instead of subsiding.

However, the DA’s top leadership, including federal council chair Helen Zille and former DA leader Tony Leon, were optimistic about the outcome of the talks and confirmed it was a matter of hours or a day before Ramaphosa made the announcement.

It is understood the ANC has offered the DA six Cabinet posts, but the DA wanted DTI, which is off the table.

The Inkatha Freedom Party would get three with four shared among the smaller parties in the GNU.

The ANC flatly refused to part ways with the security cluster departments, such as police, justice, defence and home affairs as well as finance and international relations and cooperation, as it saw them as strategic.

ALSO READ: DA reportedly threatens to leave GNU after Ramaphosa ‘changes cabinet deal’

DA holding gun at ANC’s head in talks

Political analyst Zakhele Ndlovu said the DA was holding a gun to the ANC’s head in the talks and the party had high expectations, despite receiving only 21% of the vote in the national election.

“If the DA does not get what it wants, it may pull out of the government of provincial unity in KwaZulu-Natal, leaving the MK party to dictate terms in the province. But there is fear that the MK party may scare off investors,” he said.

The politics lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said: “Both sides need to show maturity in the interest of the country. They must look beyond their narrow political interests.”

In a hard-hitting article this week, scholar and political economy analyst Chris Malikane said the GNU was a right-wing political consolidation of power, which he called the “graveyard of the ANC” as a “disciplined force of the left”.

“Besides being objectively the most unsuitable platform for political stability, this particular GNU is inherently unstable at its core, especially because of the structural fragility of the ANC – and this reinforces the DA as the ideological vanguard party of the GNU rather than the ANC.

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“Lastly, the GNU does not represent ‘the will of the people’. It is illegitimate because it is rejected by the mass of black working people.”

Malikane said the left-leaning faction within the ANC ought to have stood up to stop the ANC, which had been implementing DA’s neoliberal policies all along.

He said there was ample scholarship showing the ANC leadership had bought into the neoliberal racist agenda prior to 1994.

This leadership was therefore bound inevitably to drag to the right the “disciplined force of the left” by embracing the DA camp of “racists” and “neoliberals”.