Success, collapse or muddle? Predicting the road ahead for the GNU

Will the fledgling government of national unity (GNU) take the high road to success or the low road to collapse and disaster – or will it muddle along somewhere in the middle?

Management consultancy firm Surgetower Associates has sketched three possible scenarios:

• “United success” where political differences are put aside to address the country’s pressing challenges, prioritising economic growth, job creation and infrastructure development;
• “Fragile stability” where the GNU struggles to find common ground on policy issues, leading to internal dissent and slow progress; and
• “Fragmented collapse” where the GNU fails to reconcile deep-seated ideological differences leading to “internal haemorrhaging, widespread protest, economic collapse and social unrest”.

The firm’s director, Siseko Maposa, said the scenario planning forecasts potential outcomes from political engagement and that the scenarios “offer a probabilistic glimpse into the consequences of the GNU’s political engagement, acknowledging research limitations such as individual level analysis, institutional, and global influences”.

United success ‘unlikely’

International human rights lawyer Wendy Isaack said scenario one was highly unlikely.

“It’s not in the nature of any government who is operating or making decisions that are domestic or regional or an international focus that they operate outside of self-interest. That goes against the very nature of politics. Political parties will always act out of self-interest.”

Maposa said of the first scenario: “The GNU catalyses a paradigm shift towards a more equitable socioeconomic trajectory.

“This is evidenced by institutional strengthening and enhanced service delivery, fostering a virtuous cycle of market stabilisation, job creation and inflation containment.”

What about the second scenario?

He said in the second scenario, the GNU achieves incremental progress in governance “yielding modest socioeconomic gains.

“Unemployment rates, albeit elevated, exhibit a downward trend while targeted initiatives bolster key sectors”.

He said this comes with its own troubles of “internal contradictions hindering decision-making leading to ideological gridlock and sluggish outcomes”.

“Pockets of service delivery and sporadic class protests may emerge as segments of society grow disillusioned with the pace of reform.”

Fragmented collapse also unlikely

Isaack also said the third scenario seemed highly unlikely because if there was to be a rejection of the GNU it would have happened immediately after elections.

An example of this was the uMkhonto weSizwe party challenging the fairness of the elections.

The third scenario presented the GNU’s ineffectiveness, which Maposa said would be coupled with “cohesion unravels, prioritising ideological entrenchment over evidence-based policymaking”.

“This fragmentation triggers social unrest as class consciousness increasingly gives way to racial consciousness, stifling progress in addressing socioeconomic challenges.”

She said the second scenario was most likely to occur because “parties send signals through their policy positions and decisions, attempting to influence the actions of others”.