Desperation for good government: South Africa's political crisis

The GNU is dying. Like most of Cyril Ramaphosa’s big and brave ideas, it was bound to go this way. Slowly strangled to death by his performative sincerity laced with toxic incompetence, we can all hear its death rattle.

The two main parties entered the GNU for very different reasons. The DA was there to begin its grip on power, contrasting its organisational efficiencies with the ANC's organisational malaise for voters. The ANC was there to desperately cling onto power in an election it had lost. 

While a form of coalition government is necessary for a country as ideologically diverse and a voter population as electorally immature as ours, this GNU is a desperate propping up of lost power, rather than an assembly of efficient government.

With the ANC in the GNU knee-deep and drowning in corrupt governance, it is finding the GNU a rope around its bloated neck. Thabo Mbeki, seeing the writing on the wall a year ago, urged the necessity of the GNU. Like the school principal he is, he chastised the DA for not participating in the National Dialogue.

The senior statesman also saw a dithering ANC showing none of the moral high ground nor the political intelligence it had in 1994. Beset by failures everywhere, Mbeki saw the GNU as a last-ditch opportunity to potentially gorge the DA as it did the NNP in 2005, and thereby possibly resuscitating an ailing ANC. But the terminality is too far spread. The ANC is gorging itself. 

This first term of the GNU saw the Minister of Higher Education, Dr. Nobuhle Nkabane, vacating her post, the Minister of Police, Senzo Mchunu, put on leave following allegations of corruption and links to organised crime and Minister of Social Development, Sisisi Tolashe, in hot water over her recent trip to the UN, and new ANC ally Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture Gayton McKenzie facing racism charges in the Equality Court. The ex-President’s dream was dying.  

While DA ministers are getting on with the job of governance, and even DA leader John Steenhuiszen appears to be doing better after painfully extricating himself from the Roman Cabanac mess, the ANC seems to be caught in constant chaos. Despite the sense of disappointment one had seeing the ANC humiliated at the national polls in May 2024, one shudders to think what kind of government and country we would have had by now, had the ANC won an outright majority. 

The ANC is remembered for the bravery of Albert Luthuli, John Dube, Charlotte Maxeke, Solomon Plaatje, and many others, as well as for the many who laid down their lives in the struggle to end Apartheid. However, the later generation of cadres was corrupted by power, money, and privilege. Today, with South Africa in a crime and unemployment crisis, its leaders have no idea how to lead us out of the swamp they dragged us into. The Zondo Commission, despite its shortcomings, provided us with insight into the quality of leaders installed by the ANC who occupied key positions in our democracy. It was painful and infuriating to watch. Whereas the TRC exposed Apartheid's evil, the Zondo Commission exposed the ANC's litany of corruption and incompetence. 

The people of South Africa deserve a better government. And better government has very little to do with party affiliations. Every party has its miscreants. It has everything to do with the quality of character of those who lead us. Here, the ANC Integrity Commission has done a terrible job. 

Is there a coalition of good people that will come together, not to form a new party, but who will, for the sake of South Africa, rid their parties of those who don't deserve to preside over our future? Good government is not about perfect people. It's about good people who, aware of their imperfections, serve the nation, its constitution and its people with utter integrity.

Cape Argus