Demonisation in decline in GNU?

ANTHONY BUTLER: GNU shifts boundaries of acceptable partisan conflict

First published in Business Day and BusinessLive

04 October 2024

The national unity government has not yet brought fresh consensus about public policy, but it has already moved the boundaries of acceptable partisan conflict.

Readers who subscribe to a local community WhatsApp or Facebook group intuitively understand the public policy concept of problem framing. This refers to the way issues in our world are presented by the interested parties that describe it.

There are children sleeping in shop doorways on the main street. One group of community members complains about the litter and mess the sleepers leave behind, the local bylaws they are breaking, their alleged pickpocketing, and the damage they are doing to small business.

But other locals describe the same children in quite different terms. These youngsters have been forced to flee their homes, perhaps driven away by broken families, violence or sexual abuse. They are denied their right to basic healthcare and schooling, and they lack the emotional support and life opportunities that any child deserves.

One key aspect of these competing definitions of “the problem” is that each attributes blame and responsibility to different actors, and each contains within it a set of implied prescriptions about how the problem should be addressed.

The law-and-order contingent wants the police or a private security company to move on the lawbreakers, stop them from sleeping on the pavements, and so displace the nuisance from the community. But their opponents point to failures in the wider society, cast the children as victims, and demand interventions to ensure that they have access to support services and schooling.

One group wants a law-and-order crackdown; the other demands the creation of a local welfare state. Things turn sour when the argument goes one step further. One group accuses the other of being callous. In return they are denigrated as soft-headed or idealistic. Pretty soon — this being SA — other dimensions come into play: you disagree because you are white or black, a woman or a man — or just plain stupid. The issue itself — the street children — is lost in a self-indulgent flinging of insults.

Conflicts in national politics can develop similarly, with parties and pressure groups framing problems to build support for remedies that serve their interests. Participants assign blame to individuals or groups for causing harm, accusing them not just of making mistakes but of deliberate and malicious intent. There are three reasons why such national level conflicts can be especially hard to contain.

Problem framing at national level is professionalised. Policy disagreement in the print and social media reproduces strategic messaging designed by public relations specialists to resonate with particular audiences and, if desired, to demonise partisan opponents.

The causal complexity of national policy issues is also overwhelming. This complexity collides with the democratic but misleading modern sentiment that “I know what’s going on” — even though I usually don’t. We simple citizens fall back on childish markers of truth and falsity, with the racialists easily swaying us. The power is off? I blame Matshela Koko and you decry André de Ruyter. Sewage in the streets? I accuse Sputla Ramokgopa and you castigate Cilliers Brink.

Finally, national politics has lacked the face-to-face reality check that contains community conflicts. Local disagreements are the stuff of daily gossip, in shops, trains or on the streets. Argument can sometimes result in violence, but personal interaction tends to soften extremes and build understanding.

Here, perhaps, the unity government has started to make a real difference. Politicians can no longer demonise their political opponents and attribute malevolent intent to them, while sitting next to them at public events. Such disparagement or disrespect, so natural a few months ago, would now appear embarrassing or even ridiculous.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

September 20, 2024September 23, 2024

Why the GNU is making Ramaphosa happy

ANTHONY BUTLER: Ramaphosa seems to be enjoying the GNU ride

First published in Business Day

20 September 2024

by Anthony Butler

President Cyril Ramaphosa. File photo: ALET PRETORIUS/REUTERS

President Cyril Ramaphosa gives the impression that he is enjoying presidential office for the first time. On the face of it, this is surprising. After all, the ANC has suffered a decline of electoral fortunes under his leadership.

There are perhaps three reasons for Ramaphosa’s seeming contentment. Even his many critics accept that he has played a political blinder since the elections. His post-election speech at the Electoral Commission results centre in Midrand at the start of June proclaimed that “our people expect all parties to work together within the framework of our constitution and address whatever challenges we encounter peacefully and in accordance with the prescripts of our constitution and the rule of law”.

The government of national unity (GNU) conceit unveiled soon afterwards was well understood by senior ANC and IFP politicians who were involved in Nelson Mandela’s GNU. One DA leader had even written an extended analysis of the benefits of this first iteration. While these parties had prepared carefully for GNU, the EFF and MK party evidently had not.

EFF leader Julius Malema’s sartorial conversion in 2024, swapping red T-shirts for tailored business suits, suggests he misread tentative offers of high office emanating from ANC brokers. That he insisted on the removal of Ramaphosa as a precondition for participation in a coalition deal indicates he was disastrously misled. The MK party’s anti-constitutionalist programme likewise ruled it out of the GNU on the terms that Ramaphosa so carefully elaborated.

The president made the GNU palatable to a wider constituency in the ANC in an underhand but also ingenious manner by ignoring the terms of the statement of intent that supposedly governed it. He shamelessly applied non-functional but decorative fig leaves such as Gayton Mackenzie, Patricia de Lille and Bantu Holomisa to cover the embarrassing extremities of the grand coalition.

The second factor behind Ramaphosa’s good cheer may be the simplification of ANC internal management the election has brought. MK and the EFF have attracted politicians with legal difficulties, and spokespeople with complex psychological challenges, each of whom would otherwise be making Ramaphosa’s life difficult inside the ANC. It is arguably better to have Mzwanele Manyi or Carl Niehaus inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in, but it is surely better still to have them on a different campsite altogether.

A third reason for the president’s newly placid demeanour may be a fresh chance to shape policy somewhat freed from vested interests in the ANC’s tripartite alliance. On economic policy, the SACP now looks even more ridiculous than is customary because its general secretary has been berating a GNU in which its own leaders are participating at ministerial level.

The Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill that was recently signed into law may be pitifully inadequate — it ignores performance measurement and union-linked corruption — but it has one consequential element: muddying school governing body control over language policy.

Any fair-minded observer knows there are schools that use language as an instrument of racial exclusion. But we have also seen racial populists such as Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi building political capital by exploiting the predicament of black parents.

Regarding National Health Insurance, in which current symbolic policy reflects the interests of ANC ministers, unions and profiteers, the opposition has prioritised the demands of insurance and hospital companies and a narrow band of private health beneficiaries.

It is not impossible at all that the GNU will bring in pragmatic compromises that improve overall outcomes in both cases, and perhaps — if the coalition survives — in many others besides.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

September 6, 2024

Dizzying ambition at home affairs

Leon Schreiber deploys his expertise in public sector reform

New home affairs minister is a fan of Sars’ secure and user-friendly digital platform

06 September 2024 – 05:00

by Anthony Butler

Home affairs minister Leon Schreiber. Picture: BRENTON GEACH

Home affairs minister Leon Schreiber is one of the more intriguing appointments to the government of national unity. A member of the National Assembly for just five years, he was previously best known for his dogged campaign for the release of ANC national deployment committee minutes. Before that he was a fierce advocate of the use of Afrikaans as the medium of instruction at his alma mater, Stellenbosch, and the author of a prescient 2018 book Coalition Country.

What makes Schreiber’s rise of special interest is that he is an expert on public sector reform, with a PhD in political science (on social welfare systems) and three years of applied research experience at Princeton University’s Innovations for Successful Societies (ISS) programme.

Addressing the Cape Town Press Club on Tuesday, Schreiber set out his agenda for change at home affairs, one that draws heavily on the ISS’s approach and explicitly calls for policy learning from other developing countries.

Like all incoming ministers, Schreiber is keen to demonstrate that he is making an difference. He has chosen ending slow visa and permit processing — “no backlogs by Christmas” — as his immediate flagship intervention.

Here he hopes to replicate the turnaround initiated by then director-general — and ANC veteran — Mavuso Msimang in the run-up to the 2010 Fifa World Cup. This reform is itself detailed in an ISS paper, “Reforming Without Hiring or Firing: Identity Document Production in SA 2007-2009”.

Long wait times for IDs were caused by poorly designed processes and demoralised staff. Eschewing redundancies and working with trade unions, Msimang’s consultants simplified processes and used informal rather than formal performance measures to encourage teamwork. Waiting periods were reduced to just six weeks.

Msimang credited continuous and positive engagement with front-line workers for his success. Schreiber likewise goes out of his way to praise “honest and dedicated officials” who continued to do their jobs in the face of understaffing and the “institutional vandalism” inflicted by ANC ministers.

The new minister’s longer-term objective is “deep and meaningful” institutional reform driven by the deployment of new technologies. An ISS paper drafted by Schreiber himself in 2019 attributed much of the success of the City of Cape Town in averting a water supply Day Zero to improved data management and judicious technological interventions (though he also credits behaviour-changing communication strategies).

Schreiber is a big fan of the SA Revenue Service (Sars), celebrating various organisational, managerial and technological changes that dramatically increased tax compliance and the pool of taxpayers under (ANC deployee) Pravin Gordhan. One special interest is evidently the revenue service’s digital platform, which verifies the authenticity of documents, provides instantaneous tax assessments to 5-million taxpayers and flags potential irregularities for further investigation. He believes just such a platform, secure and broadly user-friendly, could be created to serve home affairs’ far bigger client base.

This is all dizzyingly ambitious, but Schreiber is evidently fortified by his knowledge that other developing countries have leapfrogged their peers by deploying new technologies effectively. The biggest immediate obstacle to his ambitions is Sita, the state’s own information technology agency, which will need to be circumvented if the new programme is to have any chance of success. Numerous further challenges will inevitably follow.

Schreiber is surely also aware of the fate of previous reformers. Msimang was initiator and driver of the last major home affairs turnaround, but he received almost no credit for his achievements. Instead, ANC grandee Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma was parachuted into the home affairs ministry in 2009. As soon as she arrived she claimed credit for the fruit of years of painstaking reform — and plenty of credulous journalists believed her.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

August 23, 2024

Are the cults in decline?

ANTHONY BUTLER: Waning personality cults leave leaders in disarray

First published in Business Day

23 AUGUST 2024

The waning of personality cults could well be the political news story of the year.

Across human history, chiefs, emperors and kings have demanded obeisance. Modern democracy partially dissipated such authority by containing leaders within constitutional rules. The power of individuals was for the first time balanced by elected legislatures and powerful judges.

The danger persisted though, and it has recently been resurgent. Mass and social media, quasi-religious spectacles, nationalist emotions and mass rallies allow leaders to project their personalities, and so create modern cults.

This may be changing again. In the world’s most advanced banana republic, former president Donald Trump’s fundamentalists are in retreat. Britain’s new prime minister, Keir Starmer, sucks charisma out of the air like a black hole. SA’s own cult leaders are, gratifyingly, also in disarray.

The ANC in exile successfully created a Nelson Mandela legend, but this cult entranced foreigners far more than it captivated locals. The personality of his successor, Thabo Mbeki, corrected any tendency among citizens to treat him with reverence or adoration.

Of course, Jacob Zuma has a certain charm, but he had to portray himself as a victim — a humble Zulu man put upon by others — to rise. His campaign in the May elections was scarcely that of a great national leader.

Cyril Ramaphosa has meanwhile adopted the public persona of a decent man — perhaps slightly out of his depth, and certainly a conciliator rather than an emperor.

The DA has wisely strapped its only potential cult leader, Helen Zille, into a straitjacket. While the party once exhibited classic cult behaviours — including sexual rituals in which spouses were exchanged by middle-ranking politicians and mystical or magical meanings were attributed to concepts such as “liberalism” — the DA has now settled for the amiable John Steenhuisen.

IFP leader Velenkosini Hlabisa meanwhile kept his face off election posters and adopted the persona of the school principal he once was. These key leaders at the heart of the unity government took up modest ministerial positions.

The big-man hopefuls have fared far less well. The EFF’s Julius Malema was humbled by the voters. Reportedly pursuing the deputy presidency behind the backs of his own negotiators, he divided his party with self-aggrandising behaviour.

The leaders of smaller cults, such as Herman Mashaba, Songezo Zibi, Mmusi Maimane and Patricia de Lille, resembled wandering pastors or out-of-condition yoga instructors rather than charismatic leaders.

The right kind of politics has clearly helped contain the cults. The ANC, DA and IFP all demonstrated the benefits that can flow from reasonably strong institutions, clearly formulated policies, and leaders who are servants of their parties. Their agreement to prioritise the constitution wrong-footed cultists who were spouting antisystem rhetoric and were distracted by the lure of blue-light convoys.

There was also some exceptional leadership. Soon after a herd of credulous journalists followed Zuma around the national results operation centre — while he was bleating nonsense about a stolen election, nogal — Ramaphosa showed up, exuded confidence, backed the electoral commission and thanked electors for the ANC’s trouncing.

Citizens are partly inoculated against cult leadership by the country’s apartheid history. When Malema had himself raised on a platform at the FNB Stadium during his cult’s 10-year anniversary celebrations, many observers saw Oupa Gqozo rather than Fidel Castro.

However, the most reliable defences against big-man cults are institutional. In our parliamentary system the president is elected by the National Assembly — and so by political parties — and not directly by the people.

We cannot always stop the manipulation of emotion by our politicians, but it is far harder to turn a cult figurehead into a strongman in a political system in which the people do not directly elect the leader.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

August 9, 2024

Less bleating about cabinet bloating

ANTHONY BUTLER: Bigger cabinet could aid coalition politics but strict financial boundaries are vital

The problem with cabinet costs is not so much the number of ministers as the huge waste typified by the ministerial handbook and the absurdities of VIP protection

First published in BusinessLive

09 AUGUST 2024

The first Cabinet Lekgotla of the GNU at Sefako Makgatho Presidential Guest House in Pretoria. Picture: GCIS

Many long-standing critics of a “bloated cabinet” — among them the leaders of the ANC and DA — have gone rather quiet on the issue now that they have formed an extremely large unity government.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has made repeated commitments in the past to reduce the number of cabinet ministers. In May 2019 he actually cut the number of cabinet ministers from 36 to 28.

The DA has a whole 40-page policy document, Vision 2029: Maximising Service Delivery by Minimising cabinet, which argues in favour of a 15-member cabinet.

Today though, only ActionSA’s Herman Mashaba and Build One SA’s Mmusi Maimane still bemoan an unwieldy cabinet and the use of government offices to extend patronage to coalition partners.

The most common complaint about big cabinets is that ministers’ retinues, houses, flights and cars cost money, so there should be fewer of them.

More importantly, some empirical studies have shown there is a statistical relationship between larger cabinets and poorer governance indicators (although it is not clear if bigger cabinets create worse governance or crooked governors tend to appoint large cabinets).

Other research suggests that more ministers — each trying to spend money on their own patronage networks, constituencies, and interest groups — may put upward pressure on overall government budgets.

Finally, there is some reason to believe the co-ordination of action — or simply reaching a decision — becomes harder when the size of the group involved becomes much bigger.

While these may be good reasons to avoid gratuitous expansion, a balanced assessment has to embrace what may be the modest costs — and many potential benefits — that a bigger cabinet can bring.

The problem with cabinet costs is not so much the number of ministers as the enormous waste exemplified by the ministerial handbook and the absurdities of VIP protection. These can be addressed.

Moreover, if patronage forms the basis for government even a small number of ministers will use their offices to provide jobs and services to supporters and party loyalists, and engage in elite corruption and rent-seeking. A larger number of ministers, accompanied by appropriate oversight, a rigorous budget process and a powerful Treasury, will not do so.

It is also true that government stability is a major boon for investment, and ministerial appointments can sometimes promote it. One famous study of 40 African countries over a 30 year period confirmed that more cabinet appointments can extend presidential tenure and discourage military takeover.

Another study used data for 100 countries over two decades to show that large cabinets reduce the likelihood of political assassinations, another indicator of instability.

Coalition politics, something South Africans must now reckon with, often benefits from a bigger cabinet. When many parties become involved and the complexity of negotiation grows, additional portfolios can keep smaller parties in the tent.

Indeed, the problem of cabinet size is secondary to other executive branch challenges the president and his coalition partners face. Some of these challenges were exemplified by the two presidencies of Jacob Zuma: the appointment of poorly qualified and transparently corrupt ministers to key portfolios; and frequent cabinet reshuffles that destabilised departments and made policy consistency impossible.

Other problems have survived Zuma’s departure, or even worsened under his successor, including a proliferation of ministerial task teams, parallel institutional structures with overlapping responsibilities, and a presidency that takes on more and more responsibilities without commensurate increases in its capabilities.

All things considered, a smaller cabinet is probably better than a bigger one. But a large and reasonably stable cabinet, with capable and accountable ministers and respect for constitutional and fiscal boundaries, is a pretty good second best.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

July 27, 2024

The limitations of Gamson’s Law

ANTHONY BUTLER: Weighing the DA’s slice of the unity government

Some party members are unhappy with GNU balance of power, but a closer breakdown is warranted

First published in Business Day

26 JULY 2024

ANTHONY BUTLER

We all know ANC activists who have noisily condemned the government of national unity (GNU). But DA supporters have more quietly, but equally vehemently, expressed discontent with the grand coalition.

Such scepticism is nothing new. A July 2022 Social Research Foundation poll suggested that two-thirds of ANC voters would “compromise party values … for the sake of creating a stable coalition”. Only four out of 10 DA voters were happy to do so.

Making matters worse is a perception that the ANC has benefited most from the deal. The key evidence presented by DA critics is a lack of proportionality in the allocation of meaningful ministerial positions.

American social scientist William Gamson first suggested in 1961 that parties making coalition deals expect the “payoff” from the deal to be proportional to the “resources” they bring to it. A decade later, European political scientists recast this insight as “Gamson’s Law”: the key resource parties possess — the proportion of seats they hold in the legislature — will closely match the share of ministerial portfolios they secure.

There have not been many laws in political science, and the few that have emerged have eventually turned out to be wrong. It was therefore a happy surprise for proponents of Gamson’s Law that numerous empirical studies of coalition formation, in the years that followed, confirmed that parties reliably secured ministerial positions in proportion to the legislative seats they held.

The absence of this relationship in SA has been a key basis for DA member discontent. The parties in the GNU together hold 287 seats out of the total 400 in the national assembly. The new government includes 34 cabinet ministers and 38 deputy ministers.

The ANC secured 159 seats in the National Assembly, and this translated to 22 cabinet positions and 31 deputy ministerial positions. In percentage terms, 55% of GNU seats led to 65% of cabinet positions and 82% of deputy ministerial positions.

The DA secured 87 seats in parliament but was allocated only six cabinet posts and five deputy ministerial positions. A total of 30% of GNU seats brought just 18% of cabinet portfolios and 13% of deputy ministerial positions. Adding insult to injury, many DA activists believe the party has been deprived of the most powerful and prestigious portfolios, notably in foreign affairs and the economy cluster.

However, there are four considerations DA activists should bear in mind before they condemn their negotiating team. The first is that Gamson’s Law derives from the experiences of parliamentary systems in Western Europe. A landmark study published earlier in 2024 in European Political Science Review demonstrated that it “does not travel especially well” across constitutional types or parts of the world.

Second, the biggest cause of disproportion is deputy ministerial portfolios that are mostly packed with ANC hacks, but these ministers have strictly limited powers. And third, “payoff” must be understood negatively as well as positively. The DA has steered clear of “no-win” departments and “ministerial graveyards”. It has also minimised its exposure to potential coalition collapse by deploying mostly inconsequential leaders to the executive. Four of the six DA cabinet ministers — Siviwe Gwarube, Solly Malatsi, Leon Schreiber and Dean Macpherson — are political toddlers in their 30s.

Finally, payoff isn’t just about bums on seats round the cabinet table. Long-standing demands from the DA and the IFP for devolution of powers to provinces and metropolitan authorities are likely to materialise across several sectors. The broad principle of “sufficient consensus” set out in the GNU’s founding statement of intent meanwhile places an effective policy veto in DA hands.

Sceptical activists doubtless need persuading about the merits of the coalition deal. However, the payoffs from the GNU are not so unbalanced so as to bring any early DA rebellion against it.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

July 12, 2024

Thinking long term about coalition government

ANTHONY BUTLER: GNU parties should beware myopic short-term pact

Coalition partners will need to stick together and learn from one another

12 JULY 2024 – 05:00

First published in Business Day

by ANTHONY BUTLER

As post-election euphoria subsides, the underlying character and longer-term prospects of the GNU are attracting interest. Is the current coalition government here to stay?

The answer may simply be that this is up to the bigger parties involved. At the core of GNU it remains a coalition between the ANC and DA, with the IFP — and other small party participants — that make the whole enterprise regionally and racially credible.

The bigger parties may decide to treat the coalition instrumentally, as a mechanism to protect their vote shares, enhance their public profiles and secure public office for their leaders in the short term.

As the 2026 local government elections approach, party leaders may choose to minimise the immediate electoral costs of the elite pact they have struck, deploy divisive public relations strategies that belittle coalition partners, and focus on boosting their individual vote shares.

After all, the default position of political parties, especially larger ones, is to stay the same. Large organisations find change painful because foundational values infuse everything they do, party elites are tied into intricate regional and ideological power balances, and links to key constituencies and donors have made the party what it is.

Party success and endurance has often relied on an ability to channel resources such as jobs and public services to particular constituencies, or on a dogmatic assertion of anachronistic ideological nostrums.

Political parties sadly resemble football clubs — with managers, players, funders and fans symbolically fused into a happy mob — rather more closely than they resemble repositories of wisdom and the rational calculation of interests.

While a short-term pact between football teams is the easiest way forward for the GNU parties, such an approach would be shortsighted. The idea of sufficient consensus between the ANC and the DA that underpins the current coalition will not survive very long. By providing an effective veto to the DA, it will antagonise smaller parties as conflicts over policy choices escalate.

The major opposition parties that remain outside the charmed circle, notably the MK party and the EFF, already account for a quarter of seats in the National Assembly. Once they learn how to work together and fuse their electoral offerings they will pose a growing challenge.

To fight off this anti-constitutionalist menace, parties in the GNU should stick together — but also to change. With all due deference to party leaders’ sensitive feelings, this process must start with a recognition of failure. Fewer than one in three of the eligible voting age population actually turned out for the two parties — ANC and DA together — at end-May.

The ANC has become addicted to patronage as a tool of political management, even as the power brokers it creates have generated insurgent factions that now threaten to destroy it.

The DA remains in deep denial about its image as a white-centred party, attributing this representation to an antagonistic media, confused citizens and the alleged bitterness of former black party leaders who have left.

Coalition government institutions, properly designed, can help struggling leaders face up to their deficiencies and begin to overcome them. As long-term partners the ANC and IFP can help the DA reconsider how it looks to those who do not trust it. The DA and the IFP can meanwhile assist the ANC to overcome its enduring legacy of struggle accounting.

It would be sad if the GNU was just a short-term stopgap. If it is to be more than that, the parties involved need to adopt attitudes — and create institutional mechanisms — that allow them to learn from, as well as advise, one another.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

June 28, 2024

A period of minority government might still be needed

ANTHONY BUTLER: Brinkmanship over cabinet posts shows GNU is not yet government

Pact provides shared framework for parties to interact constructively and for citizens to adapt to unfamiliar terrain

First published in Business Day

28 JUNE 2024

In the face of last-minute brinkmanship over cabinet posts we have been reminded once again that the government of national unity (GNU) is not yet a government at all.

A GNU is rather a useful idea, one that exists only because a particular group of people have decided it does. It provides a shared framework for parties to interact constructively with each other and for citizens to adapt to an unfamiliar political terrain.

The GNU’s foundational “statement of intent” included an agreement that its composition “shall be discussed and agreed among the existing parties, whenever new parties desire to be part of the GNU”. This basic commitment was not respected, which provided an early reminder that the statement is not binding. It is clear that a GNU can quickly disappear in a puff of smoke.

The idea of a GNU has been most attractive to the bigger parties involved. The ANC doesn’t have to admit it lost; instead it has been “sent a message” to work with others. The DA can participate in national government despite a stagnant support base. And the IFP can govern a province without actually having to win it.

On matters of process, the GNU commits to the magical logic of “sufficient consensus”, which arises when “parties to the GNU representing 60% of seats in the National Assembly agree”. This means the ANC and DA both have an effective veto — a huge ANC concession — so long, of course, as the statement of intent is respected, and the parties can agree precisely which kinds of decisions require cross-party consensus.

If the sharing out of ministerial portfolios gets back on track, the far harder part — reaching detailed agreement on policy — still lies ahead. Once a cabinet is sworn in there will be a policy lekgotla, followed by “an all-inclusive national dialogue” in which parties, civil society, labour and business will supposedly forge “a national social compact”. Such road-signs point towards the all-too-familiar national policy quagmire.

Moreover, the smaller parties remain a problem, adding needless complexity and mostly being distinguished by the personalities of their leaders rather than by any potential contribution they might make. Complexity can undermine coalition stability, but these parties also provide the essential “national unity” fig leaf any viable coalition now needs.

The good news is that the resource-seeking and grievance-based parties are on the outside. There has been an early commitment to defend constitutionalism, the current governance framework and institutional innovations such as Operation Vulindlela. Real policy overlap exists between the broad reform factions of the ANC, DA and IFP.

If the DA temporarily withdraws from the GNU negotiations, the basic arithmetic will not change. The ANC will be back where it began: with an unpalatable — hopefully impossible — choice between the EFF and MK. President Cyril Ramaphosa will probably be forced to form a minority government, and economic turbulence and party donor pressures will redouble.

Meanwhile, the tortuous negotiations have helped many voters to work through their confusion and pain. While there is little evidence to support the famous theory that there are five stages of grief, there has been a lot of denial and anger, and accusations and betrayal, on display.

Parties desperate to avoid alienation of their supporters, and possible desertion of their activists, have been bought time by the GNU. Weeks of negotiation have allowed party foot soldiers and shocked citizens to progress far towards acceptance that we live in a new political world.

Some of them, sadly, may need longer. But amid a national crisis the country cannot afford a prolonged stalemate.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

June 11, 2024

The end of stability?

https://www.illiberalism.org/the-end-of-stability-south-africas-watershed-election/

May 31, 2024

A path to GNU?

ANTHONY BUTLER: Minority government likely before coalition deal is struck

Probability is that a centrist government of national unity will be negotiated in the coming months

First published in Business Day

31 MAY 2024

The ANC has plenty of coalition options, at least on paper. If its final tally drops just below 50%, it can strike a “chicken wings and airtime” deal with small transactional parties.

If it drops to 46% or 47%, it will need a larger partner like the IFP. Below 46%, it can call on the EFF, the DA or the MK party.

My anticipation over the past few months has been that we will have a minority government before any such coalition deal will be struck. The reason for an immediate minority government is that the clock will be ticking. The constitution is clear that a new president must be elected within 14 days of the certification of results.

A sustainable coalition, however, requires detailed agreement on policy positions, deals over who gets which jobs, a settlement of national-provincial tensions, ombud mechanisms to manage conflict and an informal inner cabinet to keep the deal on track. Activists and voters will feel betrayed by party leaders who do deals, moreover, and they will need to be brought round.

These tasks require endless elite negotiation and leaders with time to reach out to activists. This does not mean the ANC cannot strike a superficial coalition deal inside 14 days, but such a deal is likely to collapse within months or even weeks.

This makes it likely the election of the president will take place in the National Assembly without any coalition being in place. The presidential vote is designed to produce a winner even if there is no initial majority for a candidate.

The president, in such a situation, will most likely be Cyril Ramaphosa. His minority government will probably not be immediately exposed to votes of no confidence. Meanwhile, the Public Finance Management Act allows money to be brought forward to keep the government running, even if budget votes cannot be passed.

This will create a negotiating window in which big party donors and ANC politicians involved in business will presumably harden their opposition to any deal with the EFF or MK. Financial markets are likely to enter a period of turbulence that will help concentrate minds on the advantages of a coalition of moderate parties. For many ANC politicians, of course, a deal with the DA is deeply unpalatable. For this reason, any “centrist” deal would have to include both the DA and the IFP and be packaged as a “government of national unity”.

Another pathway remains open. The ANC’s performance now seems likely to be significantly less favourable than anticipated. This complicates the negotiation of “club deals” in which coalition parties work together at both national and provincial levels. The Gauteng ANC needs the EFF more desperately than ever. The relationship between the ANC and IFP in KwaZulu-Natal is troubled, and the MK party has seized the initiative in that province.

A tally below 45% also reopens the question of Ramaphosa’s leadership. Lobbyists for an EFF coalition may initiate a putsch on behalf of Paul Mashatile or others. The option of bringing the MK party back into the ANC fold would also precipitate a change of leadership, with party chair Gwede Mantashe perhaps rising to the presidency to smooth the return of Jacob Zuma to the mother body.

Post-election coalition government will not involve a singular event. A decisive and sustainable outcome is unlikely, and any coalition that is formed will encounter challenges of sustainability.

Somewhere down the line, a resource-seeking coalition that includes the EFF, MK and ANC elements remains quite possible. For now, however, it remains possible that a centrist government of national unity will be negotiated in the next two or three months. Indeed, this remains the most likely of the many conceivable outcomes.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.