I have previously argued (https://christophermalikane.com/a-government-of-national-unity-with-no-one/) that the dominant faction of ANC leadership regards the entire spectrum of political parties, except itself, as belonging to the right. It regards the EFF as “proto-fascist”, the MKP as “tribalist” and the DA with its Moonshot Pact/Multiparty Charterists, as “neoliberals” and “racists”. The ANC leadership has not yet produced an ideological justification for choosing to share power with “neoliberals” and “racists”.
The dominant faction of the ANC leadership implements neoliberal DA policies in the state. There is also ample scholarship that shows that this leadership bought into the neoliberal racist agenda prior to 1994. This leadership was therefore bound inevitably to drag to the right the “disciplined force of the left” by embracing the DA camp of “racists” and “neoliberals”.
I also argued that the only force that could prevent this from happening, was the left that is left in the leadership of the ANC to create a mass-based upsurge against the dominant, neoliberal ANC leadership from within the ANC structures. This has not happened. It appears the leftwing and left-leaning faction within the ANC leadership is extremely weak, let alone courageous to undertake such a task. Instead of fighting some choose to resign, while others think they can cleverly and opportunistically survive the rightwing deluge that is on the horizon. Phapano Phasha’s call for the mothers in the ANC to “rise up”, will be met with deafening opportunistic silence (https://www.iol.co.za/opinion/letters/we-now-ask-you-to-rise-up-open-letter-to-lindiwe-sisulu-limpho-hani-nkosazana-dlamini-zuma-and-makaziwe-mandela-b38d79bb-3aab-4581-95e3-3765d6a579d4). It is the same call that Carl Niehaus made to some prominent leaders, who did not even respond to his call.
In the light of the absence of courageous leftwing leadership, I expect the left-oriented mass base of the ANC to hasten its already underway abandonment of the organization. I argue here that the GNU is a rightwing political consolidation of power, which is the graveyard of the ANC as a “disciplined force of the left”. Besides being objectively the most unsuitable platform for political stability, this particular GNU is inherently unstable at its core especially because of the structural fragility of the ANC—and this reinforces the DA as the ideological vanguard party of the GNU rather than the ANC. Lastly, the GNU does not represent “the will of the people”. It is illegitimate because it is rejected by the mass of Black working people.
The GNU is a rightwing political consolidation
The key factor which is always operational at the bottom of the politics in South Africa is the conflictual relationship between the capitalist class, whose dominant white fraction holds under its sway, an overwhelming amount of wealth and the working class, whose overwhelming African fraction lives under extreme conditions of squalor and it is the most exploited by the white capitalists. This basic conflictual relationship between these two fractions of the two main social classes, finds expression in the politics.
The White-led capitalist class, has adopted the neoliberal approach to capital accumulation—where the state is limited to play a regulatory role that specifically promotes the dominance of private ownership of virtually everything. The African-led working class on the other hand, wants a state-led economic system where the state directly produces basic goods and services through the state owning key sectors of the economy and thereby the state directs economic activity in the interest of the working class. The primary conflict that drives the politics in South Africa today is therefore between those in the rightwing who want a private sector led economic system, which objectively reinforces white supremacy and those in the leftwing who want a state-led economic system, which is not possible without heavy in-roads into white property.
Viewed in this way, the GNU is a political consolidation of almost all the rightwing elements in South African society. It is an outright and unashamed statement of the political dominance of the capitalist class under white-supremacy, the vanguard of which is white monopoly capital, over the overwhelmingly African, working class. The core of the GNU, as it is now obvious, is the dominant rightwing leadership of the ANC and the DA leadership. Both these aspects of the GNU core are materially and organically connected to the dominant white fraction of capital at the base. In this arrangement, the DA carries with it numerous friends who have always shared a common ideology with it, despite having an African mass base, such as the IFP. There is therefore nothing leftwing and even nothing mildly progressive about the GNU.
Mphumzi Mdekazi is correct when he says “As we are witnessing history unfolding in front of our eyes, it is difficult to debunk the emerging theory that a non-African in the form of the DA may assume political power in South Africa through political blackmail at gunpoint and in the disguise of a government of national unity (GNU)…This is facilitated by one of our own. He has a mandate, he is “progressive”, “cultured” and “broad-minded”. He is their friend, a Trojan horse of the imperialists, a committed slave, a sell-out and the enemy of African people” (https://www.timeslive.co.za/ideas/2024-06-12-mphumzi-mdekazi-to-some-africans-selling-out-their-fellow-africans-is-second-nature/). The only problem with this statement is that Mdekazi does not specify who is this “he…one of our own…a Trojan horse of the imperialist, a committed slave, etc.”
The view and sentiment that Mdekazi diplomatically expresses is shared by many progressive activists. However, there is a need to quickly move beyond outrage, and to begin engaging with the serious question of: what is to be done? In the process we are obliged to come to terms with a proper characterization of the social forces that generate mass suffering, powerlessness, and ruthless exploitation of the Black and particularly African, working people. This requires us to sharpen our theoretical understanding and to come up with ideologically coherent proposals, call a spade a spade, leaving no loopholes for political and other opportunists to once again mislead Black working people into poverty, starvation and position them as objects of super-exploitation for the benefit of the white supremacist capitalist class.
The GNU is the graveyard of the ANC
The GNU as it stands, is made up of parties that account for 70.33% of the illegitimate National Assembly. This means that the ANC is entitled to 57% of the Cabinet positions—with 31 Ministries that amounts to 18 Ministries. The DA is entitled to 31% of the Cabinet, which is 10 Ministries. The IFP is entitled two 2 Cabinet positions. The PA is entitled to 1 Cabinet position. The rest may have to be allocated Deputy Ministerial positions.
The DA made its calculations very well and the ANC did not. The DA realized that with a re-based weighting system, the ANC inside cabinet would hold sway 57% of the power, even if it holds only 40% of the illegitimate National Assembly. Therefore that devastating clause, which Fikile Mbalula overlooked, which requires that parties with at least 60% in the National Assembly agree for a Cabinet decision to go through, basically removes power from the ANC inside Cabinet, while at the same time increasing the power of the DA. A 20% party now has power to unilaterally block a Cabinet decision. Therefore, if the ANC and the DA deadlock on an issue, the ANC cannot make the decision. For every decision that the ANC seeks to take, it will require the Baaskap approval by the DA.
For example, if the ANC wants to continue with its case against Israel at the ICC, the DA can simply refuse. The ANC will only implement those policies that are in line with the DA. What this means is that, while we know that at the core the ANC leadership already implements DA policies, the role of the DA is simply to ensure that the ANC is on the straight and narrow, implementing the interests of white monopoly capital without any space to appease or hoodwink its leftwing mass base. This arrangement therefore places the DA in a position that inevitably bring the rightwing leadership of the ANC in a permanent and open confrontation with its own leftwing mass base, especially those organized in trade unions and professional bodies.
Now the ANC leadership thought that by including many parties that are friendly to it because they are “black”, somehow it would continue to have “hegemony” over the executive. The “60% in the National Assembly” clause renders this impossible. Therefore the many ANC-friendly parties like the PAC, PA, Al-Jamah and UDM that are in the GNU are just creating traffic with no significant value addition to the ANC. Their numbers in the National Assembly are not enough for the ANC camp to reach 60%. This is the simple arithmetic that Fikile Mbalula could not do, before signing the GNU agreement with the DA.
In fact these parties are now a burden to the ANC. Firstly, like the PA, they quarrel with the DA a lot and so poison the GNU environment, making the DA to adopt a hardline no-nonsense position. Secondly, they want Cabinet positions without which they will leave the GNU. We know as well that there is a coterie of Ramaphosa apologists and career opportunists who covet these positions. These positions are in short supply—and the discrepancy between supply and demand for Cabinet positions is likely to anger the small parties in the GNU. This means the ANC must cut its own positions to accommodate them, because the DA is not interested in having small, insignificant and irritating parties in Cabinet. The DA is not some Father Christmas to donate Cabinet positions in pursuance of some fake “national unity”. It is simply interested in consolidating white power everywhere and in this instance, has positioned itself as the vanguard of African natives inside the GNU.
The idea of the GNU is embarrassing and very bad for the ANC—a straightforward coalition is neater and quieter. However, perhaps more importantly for the politics, the GNU neatly demarcates who the rightwing forces are and who the left forces. The mass of the working people now have a very stark and clear ideological demarcation of political parties.
The structural weaknesses of the ANC undermine the solidity of the GNU core
The GNU as a rightwing and neoliberal consolidation is bound to fail for several reasons. The key reason for this failure is that, unlike the DA leadership, which is organically in sync with an ideologically solid mass base, the ANC leadership has no organic ideological connections with its mass base.
If we look carefully at the DA as a social formation, a striking feature is that its mass base is ideologically homogeneous when it comes to the type of economic system that it wants. The DA mass base wants an economic system that is dominated by private ownership, a private sector-led and controlled capitalist system. This is mirrored perfectly in the ideology of the DA as a liberal political party, which in modern times stands for neoliberalism in economic policy. Objectively, in the current situation, the DA is the classical, organic, above-ground political vanguard party of private capital under the supremacy of its white fraction. White supremacy in the economy finds perfect expression in white supremacy in the DA leadership. Dr. Ntando Sindane puts it well when he says the DA operates with “the robustness of whiteness” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTcBnZzZcrU). This, as Helen Zille so well put it, is truly a robust and coherent “Blue Machine”.
The ANC is nothing of the sort. Firstly, the dominant faction in the ANC leadership is deeply embedded in white capitalist networks of accumulation. This creates an objective material basis for the ideological unity between it and the DA in general. The mass base of the ANC is made up largely of the Black working people (working class and professionals) who, through their own experience of struggle, have come to adopt broadly leftwing positions. However, there is a small rightwing black section in the ANC mass base, which aspires to participate alongside the white-capitalist class in the super-exploitation of the largely African mass of the working people.
So what you have is that firstly, although its overwhelming majority is leftwing, the mass base of the ANC contains internal conflicts. There is no homogeneous ideological position in the mass base of the ANC about the type of economic system that it wants. Secondly, the dominant faction in the leadership is rightwing, while the overwhelming majority of the ANC mass base is leftwing. The ideological unity of the ANC mass base is far too weak, and not as solid as that of the DA. The dominant leadership in the ANC is ideologically at odds with the mass base, whereas ideologically the DA leadership organically reflects the homogeneous orientation of its mass base. The DA is therefore organically and structurally, far superior in its solidity and ideological discipline compared to the ANC. The DA is a small well-disciplined army, half the size of its main “opponent”, but now capable of preventing a twice as large an “opponent” from doing anything in Cabinet.
These structural weaknesses of the ANC will undo the GNU, because they create instability at its core. The attempt by the ANC leadership to mask the true ideological and treacherous class nature of the GNU by inviting more and more insignificant political parties into a fake GNU, has failed. The masses of Black working people have long seen through this sellout gimmick. The ANC is now left to bear the expense of additional value-less petty-conflicts that these parties bring to the Cabinet.
Conclusion
The GNU is a political consolidation of almost all rightwing forces in South African society. It will fail. It will fail because of the internal structural weaknesses of the ANC, which it will transmit to the GNU core. It will fail because the ANC will have to cut its Cabinet positions to make way for the insignificant, no-value adding, political parties it has invited. This will intensify the fight for positions within the ANC. These many political parties, irritate the DA and demand Cabinet positions, making the environment inside the GNU poisonous, and causing the whites to take hardline positions.
However, most importantly, the GNU will fail because it does not enjoy the political confidence of the overwhelming majority of South African working people, the working class and professionals, who are Black and African. The GNU as a rightwing consolidation will heighten the confrontation between the state and the working people. The resultant political turbulence would bring the GNU down to its knees, because working people will not fold their arms while their gains are being eroded, or their suffering persists as a result of a 20% party paralyzing executive.
The refusal of the Black working class to recognize the GNU as “an expression of the people’s will” and resistance against the rightwing onslaught from the GNU will be met with brutal suppression, because no illegitimate state can sustain itself in power without the open use of force. Never have such a configuration of conditions been so favourable to white supremacy, and never have the Black working class been so overtly vulnerable to the neoliberal and rightwing onslaught. White monopoly capital would secure the prolongation of this situation, by a combination of pretending that the GNU is a legitimate democratic expression and the overt use of force, until all the neoliberal conditions for the maximum exploitation of the Black working people and their resources are secured.
Alternatively, those within the GNU who can see heightened political conflict on the horizon that the GNU will not be able to manage, must now prepare to abandon this GNU ship, and collapse it. In any case, this GNU does not enjoy the political support of the vast majority of the working people, and so it is illegitimate. The stance of the EFF, the MKP and the ATM to not associate with neoliberals and white supremacists is morally, historically and politically correct. Their demand for the removal of Cyril Ramaphosa as State President strikes a serious blow to rightwing dominance within the ANC, because for them to enter into a coalition with a Ramaphosa-led ANC would be no different, at the core, from entering into a coalition with the DA.
The Black working people of South Africa must prepare themselves for a period of intense war. This war will be defensive, but white supremacist capital will be on the offensive. As Dr. Sindane said, “Now you have white privilege and white supremacy in government. Imagine how throttling that is. It is very scary. A black man who is not scared this morning after the DA has entered into a coalition [with the ANC], must wake up and smell the coffee. We are living in precarious times” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTcBnZzZcrU).
To fold arms and sit on laurels at this moment, hoping for some divine intervention, or that the little progressivity that is left within the ANC would be able to arrest the rightwing offensive, is to live in a world of fantasy. There is an urgent need to organize, at different levels, in different fronts and in different forms—this time with a base and leadership that is ideologically homogeneous and a leadership that is strictly aligned to the Black working class mass base, rejecting neoliberalism and white supremacy for a state-led economic system under Black working class power. The very fact that the ANC leadership has embedded itself with the DA, must send a strong message about the unfavourable balance of forces within the ANC for the Black working people. The left that is left within the ANC is not capable, alone, of winning the fight, let alone starting one, against the rightwing within the ANC and in the GNU.