ANTHONY BUTLER | Coalition government reshapes ANC’s constitutional stance

GNU reasserts communitarian values that are threatened in these polarising and populist times

First published in Business Day

September 03, 2026

The end of the year will be marked not just by local government elections but also by the mid-point of the government of national unity. GNU is approaching an accountability phase, because enough time will soon have passed for voters to make considered judgements about its performance. That makes late 2026 and 2027 a particularly revealing period for coalition stability and positioning ahead of 2029.

So far, citizens seem to have embraced the idea of coalition government quite readily while at the same time expressing growing unhappiness with the GNU’s execution of policy.

Many political observers have meanwhile adopted a cynical interpretation of GNU, viewing it as essentially a coalition between the African National Congress (ANC) and the Democratic Alliance (DA), which between them hold more than enough seats to form a government. The function of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), on this account, is primarily to obscure the true nature of the coalition. The other seven parties are there mostly to dilute the influence of the DA.

There are, however, also positive interpretations of the role that the GNU is performing in the political system. First, it tentatively reaffirms an ideal of societal unity that has been in danger of dissipating under the pressures of economic stagnation, government dysfunction, and enduring inequality. A unity once embodied in SA churches and in the ANC itself has dissolved, whereas GNU reasserts communitarian values that are threatened in today’s polarising and populist times.

Second, the GNU holds out the possibility not just of respecting but also of changing the constitution. The ANC, DA and IFP together fall just short of the two-thirds majority needed for constitutional change; the GNU parties together, in contrast, command more than 70% of national assembly seats.

A range of intractable problems have been posed by the growing dysfunction of the local government sphere, not least in the distribution of electricity and water services and the collection of user charges and property taxes. A successor GNU may well be a necessary precondition for constitutional changes that will be needed to resolve these key challenges.

Third, GNU has established a degree of rational economic policy consensus, in large measure through the self-exclusion of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and the MK Party from participation. The EFF argued that it could not enter government with parties that opposed large scale land expropriation without compensation, and the nationalisation of mines and large businesses. The MK also portrayed GNU as a grand coalition designed to preserve existing economic power rather than transform it.

Fourth, the GNU has brought together the major parties that remain broadly committed to the post-1994 constitutional settlement, while leaving outside government the two parties — MK and the EFF — that have mounted the most sustained challenges to constitutional supremacy.

MK’s 2024 manifesto proposed a referendum to scrap the 1996 Constitution which it views as a colonial settlement that gives excessive power to unelected institutions. The EFF’s manifesto, for its part, proposed substantial constitutional restructuring, including abolishing the provincial sphere and moving towards a unitary state. More recent discussion documents question constitutional supremacy itself.

In all these ways the GNU may have permanently changed the ANC itself. The liberation movement has always enjoyed a decidedly ambivalent relationship with both economic orthodoxy and constitutionalism. Prominent ANC figures have often criticised “neo-liberal economics”, constitutional supremacy, and judicial power, particularly when financial markets and courts have constrained governments. GNU is significant because it has pulled the ANC towards a more explicitly constitutionalist and economically orthodox position, even though the parties in the GNU continue to disagree profoundly on specific policy choices.

Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town