By Thobile Jiwulane
South Africa’s newly established government of national unity (GNU) is in tatters with the multi-party unity government on the brink of collapse.
Some say just a little spark would ignite the fire to end the GNU completely. But it is feared that should all fail and the current turns reach a tipping point, the radical Left would grab the opportunity and impose their socialist policies to replace the centrist approach adopted by late the African National Congress, a party once led by renowned icon, Nelson Mandela.
The latest fallout ensued when President Cyril Ramaphosa this week signed the Expropriation Bill into law, a move that sent the Democratic Alliance, it’s major partner in the 11-member GNU, into a spin. The DA objects to the legislation, which authorises the government to take and use land in the public interest. The DA is supported by fellow centre right and rightwing parties including the pro-Afrikaans language Freedom Front Plus (FF+) and Zulu-nationalism espousing Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), among others.
The fear of the DA and its backers emanates from their belief that should the land act be applied as signed by the President, it will open the way for the state to expropriate privately owned land in the name of public interest. They regard this as nationalisation in disguise. however, there are other political parties that favour the Act that argue strongly for its implementation.
The DA, a key ANC partner in the coalition partnership, has vowed to challenge the law in court and the party announced that it has sought legal advice that confirms that it has a case and it must go ahead with the litigation. According to the DA, the law, which was signed into law which Ramaphosa appended this week, goes against the spirit of the GNU agreement where parties to the unity government must be consulted before any decision was made in terms of the partnership contained in the Statement of Intent they all signed after the May 2024 election.
DA leader John Steenhuisen, who demands a reset of the GNU, sees the move as an attempt by the ANC to pursue and achieve the objective of its National Democratic Revolution, which an ANC policy to free black people politically and economically from centuries of colonial and apartheid oppression. The DA perceived the NDR as a socialist policy that is in contrast to its own neo-liberal free-market policy approach designed ultimately to achieve full blown capitalism.
Steenhuisen, while assuring that the DA would not pull out of the GNU, suggested the party would oppose the passing of next national Budget in Parliament and cautioned Ramaphosa that he should not forget that he was in power because the DA voted for him in Parliament to become the President. Otherwise without the party’s support, he wouldn’t have been elected. Steenhuisen considered the fact that the other parliamentary next major parties such as the Umkhonto Wesizwe party (MKP) and Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) were completely oppose to Ramaphosa becoming the President and he was indeed rescued by the DA and the rightist parties. Also without the DA support, the budget may not be passed and the stalemate would help MKP and EFF who would rejoice to see the Ramaphosa government failing with no budget passed.
Now the GNU is divided into two sides – between those parties that support the land expropriation law led by the ANC and those opposed to it led by the DA. Ramaphosa is backed by parties with leftist leaning within the GNU that argue that the DA was playing politics because the Act was not new, but it was already passed in parliament with the DA present and question why the party only woke up now to oppose it now that the same was signed by the President.
Ramaphosa and his ANC are caught in this dilemma. The ANC under Ramaphosa needs the DA for the survival of the GNU and his own political future as head of state, otherwise if the two parties break their bond, that’s almost the end of the centre right unity government in its current form. Should the GNU break up, it could lead to the establishment of a left-leaning government, which both the ANC and the DA has tried hard to avoid.
South Africa’s left, or the “dreaded left” as some describe it, constitutes MKP led by the rebellious former President Jacob Zuma and the EFF, a radical openly socialist party led by the youthful and fiery leader, Julius Malema. Both parties are splinters from the ANC and both their leaders were expelled from the party on misconduct charges emanating from putting the ANC into disrepute. After they left the party they formed their own parties and adopted radical policies on economic transformation including expropriation of land without compensation, nationalisation of the South African Reserve Bank, the country’s central bank and mineral resources and implementing wholesale free education in the country.
Another section of the left is constituted by the South Africa Communist Party (SACP), the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) and minority left parties such as the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), Azanian People Organisation (AZAPO) and leftist moderates like United Democratic Movement, Al Jamaah and African Transformation Movement. Although the Patriotic Alliance is a right-leaning party, it is favoured by the left to co-operate with because of the radical approach towards socio-economic change by its leader, Gayton McKenzie.
The SACP and Cosatu had a pre-democracy alliance partnership with the ANC that still continues to exist today. The tripartite alliance, as it is known, was formed as a strategy to fight the white apartheid system.
But the two partners, particularly SACP are opposed to the GNU that contained the DA and the Freedom Front Plus. They claim the DA in particulary is an ideological enemy due to its neo-liberal policies and pursuit of Capitalism and had no interest of the black people at heart.
But the ANC is refusing to break its ties with DA or to end the GNU in its current form. It is also refusing to form a leftist GNU comprising the EFF and other left smaller parties as demanded by the SACP. As a protest, the SACP had taken at decision at its special national congress in December to contest the upcoming 2026 local government election separately from the ANC under whose umbrella it contest polls since the dawn of 1994 democratic despensation.
However, moderates within the ANC appear willing to let go of the SACP and continue with the alliance DA as the main partner in the GNU. But clearly the party is not single-minded on the issue. A grouping within the ANC and based in the rich Gauteng province and South Africa’s economic hub, are opposed to the DA completely. Prominent among the opponents of the ANC-DA partnership is Gauteng premier and party provincial leader, Panyaza Lesufi. He is outspoken about his position towards the DA. Several reports in the media and from analysts suggest Lesufi is being backed by Ramaphosa’s deputy, Paul Mashatile, also a resident of Gauteng province.
The ANC is bound by the pact it signed with all the ten parties in the GNU including the DA, which is the second largest after the ANC in the unity government. Several analysts suggest that it would be wise for the ANC to stick with the DA for the sake of political stability in South Africa and to assure investors. There is general fear that it would be dangerous to align with the EFF because the party would push the ANC to adopt radical policies that would scare away investors. But nobody favour the inclusion of MKP in the process due to Zuma record of corrupt leadership that includes facilitating the capture of the state by private sector. His action resulted in the stealing of public funds by his friends, the notorious Gupta brothers from India who are currently wanted in South African for fraud, corruption and money laundering among other allegations.
Besides the ANC including the SACP believe Zuma is not the right leader to participate in the current process as he has unfinished business with the ANC. Despite having established his own party, Zuma still demands to be reinstated as a member of the ANC, which many see as a contradiction.
So politically, the ANC is caught between a rock and a hard place, unsure whether to continue with the DA in the GNU or to break up with it and accept the SACP’s demand for a left government. The advantage of taking the left direction, some say, would be the fast-tracking of reforms in general including land reform to address landlessness among black people or it has to remain with the DA and be patient on how the land issue should be addressed. But one thing for sure, if the DA continues with its intransigency it risks pushing the ANC towards the left and its radicalism including land expropriaton.
The land question is a contentious issue in South Africa that is always guaranteed to divide the nation on the basis of skin colour. This because most of the land is in the hands of minority whites who constitute a mere 13% of the population while the black majority own little to zero of the land after they were deprived of it by colonialism and succesive white apartheid regimes. The land was taken from the Africans through successive land acts that resulted authorities systematically evicting them from their property for at least six decades where they were renders as farm labourers and servants in their own land.
Although the British and Afrikaners, known as the Boers in reference to their acumen for farming, were involved in their own territorial wars such as the Anglo-Boer War in the 19th century, at the end of the conflict they closed ranks against Africans whose land they systematically grabbed and demarcated for their own usage while blacks were forced out. The process, which was imposed by both the British colonial rulers and successive Afrikaner-led regimes under the former National Party, targeted prime fertile land while Africans were contained into small pieces demarcated under a land trust system by the British Empire and white farm consolidation system of the National Party. Blacks, both in rural farmland and peri-urban areas were forcefully removed and transported in trucks to live in tiny, dry hinterlands prone to drought and famine. Those in the urban were moved away from the cities to racially exclusive black township and homeland where they practice power as black councillors and ethinic black homeland leaders.
Evictions from white farms continue to date despite legislation passed by the black-led democratic government to prevent those evictions. Some farmers, had encouraged their workers to obtain RDP-houses, a name for state-subsidised tiny brick houses for poor and low income blacks, at nearby new townships, a subtle way to get them to stay away from their farmer’s land. They are trying to dodge a law that provides for black farm tenants to qualify for ownership of the farm or part of it if they were born or had been there for a longer period of time.
Since 1994 the democratic government led by Mandela attempted via legislation to address land disparity and deprivation. This involved land reform in the form of redistribution and restitution so that land was restored to the black majority. Despite also that a commission on land restitution was established, but very little progress had been made since then. Subsequently many desperate communities resorted to grabbing the land and occupying it illegally. The’ ANC is only beginning to realise its failure to address the land question to the satisfaction of the majority who are now disgruntled. But time is against it as dissatisfaction continues to rise rapidly.
In a concerted attempt in the last few years to redeem itself, the ANC tried to pass the land expropriation without compensation legislation. But the move was defeat because it could not muster the two-thirds majority for the Bill to be passed in Parliament as required by section 25 of the Constitution. The expropriation always raised fears from business and investors about the security of their property and loss of profits and investments in the process of state sponsored expropriation to address shortages. it’s a Catch-22 situation for the ANC which is on the brink of losing power complete in the next election. Now the ANC see the legislation as a new opportunity to redeem itself by expropriating, hoping to win the hearts and mind of the electorate. The party has gone down to 40% in the May 2024 election from 57% in 2019, its biggest electoral drop since 1994.
The new law is moderation compared to the land expropriation without compensation. It is actually an improvement on the long existing law that was passed by the apartheid NP where the state had the authority to expropriate land for the purpose of development such as the building of a road and other public infrastructure. In this process the property was expropriated in part or in full depending on the intended purpose but with compensation.
The land deprivation is massive and blacks occupy less than 10% of the countries land mass while they constituted 80% of the population. This had resulted in illegal land occupation by communities causes !squatter camps”, a local name for shanty-towns built on the periphery of townships and cities. Land-grabs had overwhelmed the ANC-government over the years with now foreign nationals, mainly undocumented immigrants from neighbouring countries who illegally cross the border to set up their own shacks despite being illegal statuses.
Landlessness had caused rebellion against the state from locals who are also envious of sharing the land and jobs with illegal foreigners the majority of whom were from Zimbabwe with others from Malawi and Mozambique. The envy also emanates from the fact that South African employers prefer to hire these immigrants to hire for jobs such as labourers, petrol attendants, restaurants and hotel waiters and chefs, car washes and now also retails sector where they served as tellers, and shop assistants. Immigrants, especially undocumented one come cheap for the profit-driving businesses because they accept very low wages out of desperation to make a living. But all this happen at the expense of local people who remain unemployed due to being discriminated by employers who regard them as too expensive and too demanding on wages.
With the land issue almost wholly unaddressed, the ANC has little time to redeem itself otherwise it’s facing lose out. It has to do as much as possible within the current five-year term to restore land ownership to the black majority, something if failed to do in the last 30 years in power. It had lost already in the 2024 national and provincial elections forcing it out of sole power and to form a coalition with former opposition parties with which it had no real commonalities ideologically.
Clearly in this case a dose of public relations exercise would be necessity for the ANC otherwise the remaining period is too little for it to make any difference or to convince the disgruntled voters that it could still do better. But there are obstacles, the party is not ruling alone, it must hear the views of other parties or face regular litigation that would delay the whole land reform process facilitating the ANC fast exist from power.