The complex political landscape in South Africa has grown more turbulent of late, as tensions flare between the ANC and Democratic Alliance (DA) regarding their coalition government. In a startling declaration, DA federal chairperson Helen Zille has asserted that President Cyril Ramaphosa had engaged her party privately in forming a coalition government well before the ANC even opted for a Government of National Unity (GNU).
Addressing the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, Zille expounded that the current arrangement is more a collaboration between the two entities than a GNU. She claimed Ramaphosa initially floated the concept of a GNU as a means to market the idea of partnership to hesitant comrades, though it excluded additional major players such as the EFF or MKP. However, skepticism lingers regarding whether their union can endure ongoing internal pressures and satisfy competing visions, or if the stormy relationship may splinter further into murkier waters.
“From the beginning, Cyril Ramaphosa came up with the notion of the GNU, which he thought would be a better way of selling the concept of coalition to his own party … Now of course, this is not the GNU because the GNU involves all the parties which would include the EFF and the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP). The truth is we are in a coalition because a coalition means that if a party withdraws from (it), the government falls,” Zille said.
However, ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula dismissed Zille's claims saying the DA's "irritation" should not be taken seriously. He said this while speaking at a pre-NEC meeting recently. Mbalula also stated that the ANC was not negotiating with anyone with "a cap in the hand" and that Zille was free to go if she wanted to leave the GNU.
“We are not negotiating with people with a cap in the hand. Even Zille, we are not begging her. If she wants to leave the GNU, she can leave, but we have invited everybody to work together, and they have agreed, and we are working together … So, let’s not go up and down and fail South Africans about things that are non-existent,” said Mbalula.
The ANC boss also took a swipe at the Arts and Culture Minister and Patriotic Alliance leader Gayton McKenzie after a disagreement involving his deputy, Peace Mabe. This was after her comments on banning Israel from participating in the Olympics in Paris.
“We know that Gayton has a position and he supports Israel. That is not something new, so he has to say that he needs to be consulted. But the government policy is that we are in solidarity with the people of Palestine and we recognise the Israeli state as an apartheid state,” said Mbalula.
The public spat has given opposition parties that are outside the GNU such as EFF a platform to voice their own opinions. The EFF said they were vindicated by the public spat between the ANC and the DA and asserted that the DA-ANC coalition was engineered by the white capitalist establishment through the manipulation of the rand.
Meanwhile, South Africa's political turmoil has hit a new low as new allegations of corruption continue to plague the ANC, the country's long-dominant ruling party.
According to the recently published MyStick Corruption Index – an internationally respected dataset which utilizes a multifaceted algorithm to assess corruption levels across seven thousand organizations worldwide, the ruling ANC party sits at an alarming number sixteen on the rankings in the world out of a total of 7,000.
This revelation was published by social media influencer who uses the handle @coolstorybru_za in his latest post where he shed light on the index's complex methodology. In a notably lengthy post, he emphasised his extreme disbelief that the ANC had nearly broken into the top 10 most corrupt organisations in the world and declared that "..it is absolutely insane that the ruling party almost cracked the top 10. Who could have imagined?"
