The importance of an ANC with the ANC

[Nat Quinn]

The importance of an ANC with the ANC

William Saunderson-Meyer |

21 February 2025

William Saunderson-Meyer on John Steenhuisen’s embarrassingly inept record in the GNU

JAUNDICED EYE

Marry in haste, repent at leisure. The Democratic Alliance is learning the hard way that before rushing into nuptials with the African National Congress it should have remembered the other meaning of the acronym ANC — ante-nuptial contract.

In its haste to join the Government of National Unity (GNU), the DA failed to take the rote precaution of a tightly written and enforceable contract to define the terms of the union. Instead, when Cyril Ramaphosa leered wolfishly at his intended and growled, ’Trust me, baby!’ John Steenhuisen, long lacking romance in his life, fell over himself to say, ‘I do!’.

Now, with South Africa buffeted by unprecedented challenges, all traceable to the incompetence, criminality and idiotic policies of the ANC, the DA is paying a high price for its naïveté. The cost of remaining in the GNU — which most, but not all, of the DA leadership views as a sacred mission to keep the hard-left uMkhonto weSizwe and Economic Freedom Fighters from forming a government with the ANC — has been disillusionment among a key bloc of its traditional voters.

The white and coloured communities, and within those communities, Afrikaans-speakers, are critical to the DA. An African Affairs study by the University of Edinburgh’s Caren Runciman showed that between 2016 and 2023, more than 90% of whites and almost 80% of coloureds had voted for the DA at least once. A significant number of those deserted the DA for Freedom Front Plus during its ‘ANC-lite’ years under Mmusi Maimane, only to return in last year’s general election.

Since entering into the GNU, there have been at least three issues on which the DA has embraced the role of a mid-20th century subservient little woman in the kitchen to the paternalistic head of the household, the ANC. Judging by social media commentary, anger and disillusionment — much to the delight of Ramaphosa, no doubt — is rife among traditional DA supporters. These three Act were the so-called ‘redline’ non-negotiables upon which the DA’s continued participation in the GNU hinged.

The first was BELA, the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act which substantially reduces the power of school governing bodies vis-à-vis the State and which, over time, will effectively erase Afrikaans as a primary language of instruction in most of the country. When Ramaphosa called the DA’s bluff and told them that the door was open for them to leave, they folded.

The second was the Expropriation Act  (EA) that opened the door to seizure by the State, including at a municipal level, of any private property, potentially with nil compensation and on conveniently vague grounds. Again, despite its initially vociferous opposition, the redline proved to be a mirage.

When Donald Trump slammed the EA and cited it as a justification to freeze aid to South Africa for a bizarre offer of refugee status for those affected, especially Afrikaner farmers, Steenhuisen was shamefully quick to toe the ANC line that the legislation was essentially benign. It was not true, said Steenhuisen, that the law allowed land to be seized arbitrarily and without compensation. He then went on to slam Afrikaner civic organisations like AfriForum and its trade union, Solidarity, for disseminating ‘misleading information’ about the EA and thus contributing to ‘international misunderstandings and escalating tensions’.

This was an astonishing volte-face by Steenhuisen. During last year’s election campaign, the DA had described the EA as a ‘threat‘, a ‘disguised version of expropriation without compensation’ and a ‘reckless attack on the Constitution’.

Reportedly, there has been widespread dissatisfaction within the party at these latest comments by Steenhuisen. News24 quoted an unnamed public representative of the party in Gauteng as saying, ‘DA members are constantly confronted about our participation in the GNU, especially where voters believe we fundamentally undermine our own policy positions.’

In the face of a blizzard of negative social media commentary, Steenhuisen a day later tentatively shuffled back from his comments. However, it was left to Helen Zille, the DA’s federal council chair, to try to rescue the DA from Steenhuisen’s gaffe.

Announcing the lodgement of the DA’s High Court challenge to the EA, she pointed out that the party had long opposed the legislation because it was an attempt to implement expropriation without compensation. She said the EA was ‘substantively and procedurally unconstitutional’. Embarrassingly for Steenhuisen, she compared the EA — much as had AfriForum and Solidarity — to ‘similar powers exercised by the apartheid government’.

The third DA supposed no-will-do is the National Health Insurance (NHI) Act. An unrealistic project to establish a universal health care system, the Act is classic ANC behaviour of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Enormously ambitious in scope but entirely uncosted, it seeks not to build on South Africa’s enviously advanced private healthcare sector but instead to replace it quickly and completely.

Steenhuisen recently played up reports that he and Planning Minister Maropene Ramokgopa had struck an ‘informal agreement” on the NHI. The deal involved an ANC concession to drop those sections of the Act that would collapse the medical aid schemes. The announcement, Steenhuisen confidently told the media, would be made in Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation address (SONA).

Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi, however, said he had no knowledge of such an agreement. And SONA was delivered without any reference to it.  So, an understandable eagerness to avoid tripping over yet another redline snare ended with Steenhuisen instead falling flat on his face.

Of course, this does not mean there isn’t an NHI deal in the offing. It may be that in response to sustained pressure from organised business, health and medical professional bodies, and civil society, the ANC is at last looking to find a compromise. But it does indicate that Steenhuisen is overly gullible, allowing himself to be the ball in a game refereed by Ramaphosa, between ANC pragmatists like Ramokgopa on the one side and hardliners like Motsoaledi on the other.

Given the DA’s embarrassing performance and Ramaphosa’s success until now in exploiting divisions in that party, estranging it from its natural voting base, it is forgivable that Steenhuisen is this week trumpeting as a DA victory the fact that Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana’s Budget speech had to be postponed at the last minute. The truth is more nuanced.

Godongwana’s proposal to increase VAT by two points to 17% in order to fund a R173 billion increase in medium-term spending — mainly healthcare and education, as well as R46 billion for infrastructure — earned the displeasure not only of all the opposition parties in the GNU. Most importantly, it also shocked some senior ANC Cabinet ministers. Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni hastened to minimise the DA’s role, saying ANC members were ‘among the first’ to object to the proposed hike.

One has a sneaking suspicion that the ANC will not be too unhappy with the way the Budget postponement unfolded. It will be interpreted abroad, including by the high-level European Union (EU) delegation that’s just arrived in the country ahead of the SA-EU Summit in March, as a reassuring indication of the robustness of the GNU arrangement. Markets and local investment houses, too, have been largely phlegmatic. Hendrik du Toit, CEO of Ninety One, SA’s largest asset management firm, counselled this was not a time to panic but evidence of ‘democracy at work’.

However, the problem that remains is that Godongwana didn’t settle on VAT hikes lightly. He would have been painfully aware of the political repercussions of such a move. At the end of the day, on the new Budget date of 12 March, either expenditure will have to be cut or the revenue raised through some other tax or through increased borrowing.

There are hard choices ahead for the DA. In the absence of a detailed pre-GNU agreement on broad policy parameters and fair deadlock-breaking mechanisms, it may find that its influence in the GNU is minimal. The eventual choice could be stark: either to go with the ANC flow or dig in its heels and collapse the GNU. Whatever it does, the DA will be pilloried.

 

source:The importance of an ANC with the ANC – OPINION | Politicsweb

 

 

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