ANTHONY BUTLER: Constitutionalists up against populists on way to 2050

First published in Business Day

01 November 2024

by Anthony Butler

MK Party supporters. Picture: SANDILE NDLOVU

It is becoming possible, at least after an alcoholic beverage or two, to discern two broad pathways for SA towards 2050. 

Socioeconomic and political conditions will continue to generate widespread discontent with governing parties. Stagnant per capita incomes, decaying infrastructure and the normalisation of corruption are all well established and cannot be significantly reversed for many years. 

In the first scenario, a broadly constitutionalist and economically orthodox coalition will continue to govern, albeit with great fluidity in its composition in the run-up to elections. Such a pact will embrace centrist elements from what is now the ANC and representatives of the urban middle class and others represented by the DA. 

By contrast, in the second scenario a more populist coalition will capitalise on discontent to secure a fleeting national majority. This quite different pact will bring about a reconfiguration of the constitutional order and engage in hazardous economic experimentation. 

While the focus of much analysis has been the fragility of the government of national unity (GNU), we also need to consider the viability of a coalition-building project among groupings outside the frontiers of the unity government, the MK party and the EFF.

Scholars are at loggerheads about the EFF’s policy proposals — is it fascist, proto-fascist, predatory, populist, right wing or left wing? MK has fully grasped the centrality of coalition building, repeatedly urging “the unity and unification of all progressive political parties” to fight against “white minority rule in SA”. The EFF repeats a similar mantra about the people at large battling “white monopoly capital”. 

However, there are several reasons why such coalition-building will prove difficult. Opposition parties need to campaign with strong messages to motivate the six out of 10 eligible voters who do not vote. Scholars are at loggerheads about the EFF’s policy proposals — is it fascist, proto-fascist, predatory, populist, right wing or left wing?

Some anthropologists even describe the EFF as amorphous regarding class and identity, or an “intense, confusing amalgam”. The study of MK has set off on a similar path, and scholars may well find another amorphous amalgam. 

Yet there are clear messages that cannot easily coexist within a coalition of “progressive forces”. MK seethes with resentment at immigrants, demanding trained locals replace imported skills, stronger border security and “respect for SA African laws”. The EFF is still all hug-a-foreigner. 

The red-tops question Western conceptions of democracy, which they believe should be “aligned with” versions ostensibly practised by traditional leaders. MK goes much further, demanding greater authority for tribal monarchs and chiefs, deference to their arbitrary power at national level, and the establishment of constitutional patriarchy. 

MK is socially conservative in a way the EFF simply cannot be, as is exemplified by its open determination to repeal same-sex marriage legislation and its slightly less open bigotry. 

The two parties share another important feature that divides them: ethnic and regional heartlands. Indeed, the MK party’s vote share in the 2024 elections, concentrated in KwaZulu-Natal, set back the EFF’s efforts to build out of its traditional strongholds. 

Where regional or ethnic divisions affect voting, they complicate coalition formation. A big party leader must recruit allies to solicit votes, resulting in coalitions between ethnic and regional blocs. These deals are brokered by leaders who buttress their base by distributing resources to activists and voters. This results in parties dominated by charismatic leaders who ostentatiously distribute the spoils of office to their followers. 

Of course, MK and the EFF don’t have many spoils to distribute. Their leaders dominate their parties and seem unlikely — or unable — to concede control over their constituencies to one another. One of them also has a limited life expectancy. All of this means coalition building may prove beyond the capabilities of the leaders of the progressive forces. 

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

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.

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.

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.