Every few weeks since June 2024, when the Government of National Unity was birthed, the country goes into crisis.
The script is the same. The ANC proposes, implements or passes into law, without much consultation, some or other policy.
The DA, the biggest of the ANC’s nine coalition partners, gets a heart attack and excoriates the majority party in public.
The ANC digs in, behaving as if it commands a 50% plus one majority, when it doesn’t.
The news television shows and columnists and social media punters get very excited, and the headlines say the GNU is “on the brink” and we start using words like “inevitable” in reference to the end of the partnership.
We were there again on Friday, with the rand falling as much as 1% against the US currency to trade at R18.41 to the dollar by late afternoon.
This time it was because the DA had proposed to the ANC that, in the aftermath of the budget fiasco, the two should share management of economic policy.
DA leader John Steenhuisen told journalists that the DA had entered into a coalition with the ANC to “grow the economy and create jobs”, but could not do so with the ANC’s current stance on power-sharing.
“If we are unable to do so and the ANC want to lock us out of key decisions we have no way to influence economic policy,” he said.
This week the two parties will likely gather at the negotiating table again and may well find each other and the storm will pass. A few weeks later we will do it again.
After 10 months, it is time to bring this sort of “governance by crisis” and “power-sharing by threat” to a halt. It is boring. It is time-wasting. It is dangerous. It shows a deep lack of seriousness and commitment by all parties concerned. It is juvenile. It is disrespectful to voters. It shows a lack of leadership.
It must stop. There is absolutely no good that will come to SA through this kind of management by crisis. Instead of deep and meaningful long-term strategic planning, we have knee-jerk, quick-fix solutions to problems.
Instead of building a state that is trusted by citizens and partners domestically and abroad, we have one that is perpetually viewed with suspicion and trepidation because it is always on a crisis footing. When a country is led and managed this way, it never solves its problems because it is always troubleshooting.
As we have seen with many of the attempted solutions at places like Eskom and other SOEs, these knee-jerk solutions worsen rather than solve problems.
There is a problem when one’s leaders become addicted to government by crisis. They no longer seek solutions. Instead, they are aiming for partisan victories for themselves and not for the country.
The current impasse over the budget and the VAT increase is a perfect example. Minister of finance Enoch Godongwana proposed a two percentage point increase in a cloak-and-dagger fashion in February.
The DA blew its top. It was not the only one — ANC members of cabinet, the Patriotic Alliance and other coalition partners balked at such a proposal in the current economic climate.
The lines were drawn. Godongwana now does not want to “lose face” by acceding to the very reasonable demands to dump this nonsensical increase and find other ways of plugging SA’s debt hole.
His party, the ANC, now feels that it cannot “lose face” by being seen to share management of economic policy with its coalition partner, the DA.
The DA does not want to “lose face” by being seen to “cave in” to the ANC’s bullying tactics in saying no to sharing management of economic policy.
So, instead of a serious attempt to solve SA’s gargantuan challenges — no jobs, no economic growth, spiralling debt — we are presented with a coalition government that is in an ego fight.
The poor mother in Nyanga who is raising children on her own is forgotten in this kind of set-up.
Instead, we have a DA that feels it is being disrespected and an ANC that feels that it is undermined as the “senior” in the coalition arrangement.
There is no winner here. These ego-driven politics are taking us all to an explosion we will all come to regret.
The ANC and the DA, by managing this coalition by crisis, are letting go of a brilliant opportunity to show that great results can be achieved through collaborative, respectful governance.
Both can walk out of a GNU with tangible victories to parade before voters in the local elections next year and in 2029.
However, if they continue in this crisis mode they will lose respect, damage the country, gain nothing for themselves, hurt the idea of collaborative politics, and leave the poor of SA in a far worse place than they were in last May when they voted for a coalition government to take over from sole ANC government.
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