After the 29 May 2024 elections South Africa now has a so-called "government of national unity (GNU)". The designation is inaccurate, since several major parties are not participating. A more apt description would be "a multi-party government (MPG) under ANC leadership."

In Parliament on 18 July President Ramaphosa even described present South Africa as a “cooperation nation”. That is clearly not correct either. The core reason why ANC, DA and other parties are now together in government is that the ANC’s support has dropped drastically below 50%, not because of feelings of mutual affinity.

The monikers government of national unity and cooperation nation create a misleadingly soothing impression that power struggles and political strife have now largely subsided, at least as far as the MPG parties go.

The reality is that under the pressure of circumstances – for the DA, happy circumstances, and for the ANC, unhappy – otherwise unallied parties have been pushed into partnership in office. Partners and allies are vastly different things. Partners they are, but allies certainly not.

With the confirmation of the ANC's sharp decline to 40.2%, Ramaphosa quickly and wisely moved into the role of magnanimous statesman. The people, he said, spoke in the election and instructed the parties to work together. The ANC then shrewdly took the initiative and invited all parties to establish a "government of national unity (GNU)". This culminated in an agreement to that end between the ANC and a variety of parties – encapsulated in the Declaration of Intent.

However, the supposed new politics of unity, cooperation and inclusiveness is a deceiving pretence hiding the deeper opposite reality of ongoing power struggle now under the MPG guise, on two levels. Firstly, on the level of the competing ability of parties in office to determine the direction of governance; and secondly, the level of ideological antagonism – the first discussed in this piece, and the second discussed in Part III.

The election result means that a weakened ANC must pursue its declared goal of transformationism, involving centralist party control over all sectors of society – the so-called national democratic revolution – within the somewhat constrained and awkward framework of the MPG. The licentious platform of unbridled one-party dominance of the preceding thirty years is no longer available.

The ANC must now, as Niccolo Machiavelli would put it, be a fox rather than a lion.

This does not mean that the DA and other parties in the MPG should have rejected the ANC's invitation to such an arrangement. On the contrary, it was wise to accept it, because hopefully these parties positively affect the dismal state of governance in South Africa. However, at the same time it will serve them well to be keenly alive to the ANC’s continued commitment to its harmful politics of transformationism.

ANC’s grip on office is weaker than before 29 May

Before 29 May, the ANC was in office in the legislatures and executives nationally and in eight of the nine provinces. Thanks to its decline in the election, this close to outright dominance is (at least for the time being) over, and the ANC is now dependent on other parties to form governments. Hence, it’s grip on office has slipped somewhat. (In fact, in KZN the ANC is now only a junior partner in the provincial government following its enormous electoral loss in that province.)

How is the ANC going about mitigating its partial retreat from office?

This question immediately poses a difficult dilemma for the ANC. Although it shares the same ideological and political DNA with the EFF and the MK Party, pressing political conditions compel it instead to form a government with the "anti-revolutionary white parties" such as the DA. The EFF and the MK Party are deemed too disruptive and potentially too unpredictable to qualify for cooperation. Even more important is that the EFF and the MK Party can hardly be of assistance to reverse the increasing failure of the state, whereas the DA can be.

This is evident – albeit imperfectly – from the DA’s record in the provincial government in the Western Cape and the municipalities where it governs. The ANC knows this and wants on national level to capitalise on the DA's ability (and, indeed, utmost willingness) to arrest some of the state’s malaise and make it function better. So rather get the DA on board in a multiparty government: assign cabinet portfolios to it and allow for limited staff turnover in the public service. Also, it seeks to corral the DA and other MPG parties into executing ANC policy – something these parties must be very wary of. In some cases, it may even be willing to make marginal, if temporary, policy concessions as part of its broader transformationist strategy.

From the point of view of the ANC, this is of course a risky manoeuvre. It is true that the DA can help reverse state decay, but what if the DA’s being partially in office enables it the opportunity to grow too strong, something the ANC naturally wants to avoid at all costs? While the ANC leadership therefore feels under pressure to bring the DA into the MPG, it must try to limit its own partial retreat from office as far as possible and keep the power share of the DA in check.

It is in this context that the ANC is executing power politics vis-à-vis the DA – instrumentalising the DA for its own larger ends. As the short history since the 29 May election shows, the ANC has thus far had notable success in this. Four items are at issue.

1. Election of the President

The ANC and the DA agreed on Friday 14 June that the DA (and several smaller parties) would support the ANC's candidate for the presidency. (The election of office bearers in the national legislature such as the speaker and deputy speaker is also covered by the agreement.) This bore immediate fruits for the ANC, as Ramaphosa later that day was elected president with a large majority of members of the new National Assembly (NA). This helped the ANC out of a big quandary, because with only 159 out of 400 members in the NA, it could not on its own secure Ramaphosa's election. 

2. The formation of the national government

The composition of the Cabinet could now proceed with Ramaphosa as head of government exercising his power under section 91 of the Constitution. This power vests exclusively in the president but is always carried out with a series of considerations, of which the dynamics in his own party are the most important.

This time, owing to the ANC losing its absolute majority, Ramaphosa was also obliged to appoint opposition members to the Cabinet in accordance with the Declaration of Intent that laid the basis for the MPG agreed to by the ANC, DA and other cooperating parties. It stipulates that the government must be constituted to reflect genuine inclusiveness of participating political parties by broadly accounting for the number of seats these parties have in the NA. It states that when appointing the Cabinet, the President must take the election results into account.

However, the Declaration is conspicuously vague on this and leaves the President with broad discretion: the total number of ministers and deputy ministers who would be appointed is not stated; neither which nor how many portfolios would go to opposition parties. Although according to the election result the DA would be entitled to many more ministers out of the 32 than the six it finally got, according to the Declaration there was no obligation on the President to appoint more than the six. The DA's position was further undermined by the only six deputy ministers from the exorbitant tally of 43 Ramaphosa eventually appointed.

Evidently, the DA’s position would have been much stronger, and the ANC’s weaker, if the number and specific portfolios had been explicitly clarified, instead of leaving it to the President. Perhaps the DA tried hard to have the Declaration worded more specifically. The bottom line, however, was that the DA’s support in the presidential election was secured, without a specified counter-performance in terms of ministerial and deputy ministerial positions being expressly negotiated. The ANC on this important score therefore plainly practiced effective power politics against the DA.

3. The involvement of the other parties other than the ANC and the DA

The election result was a big shock to the ANC. However, the ANC was quickly ready with an alternative plan in the guise of the MPG as eventually outlined in the Declaration of Intent. Except for the anti-Ramaphosa faction in the ANC, the ANC’s preference was for the DA to be its partner in the MPG; but not the DA alone. On the contrary, the ANC wanted to involve as many other parties, more specifically smaller parties, in the new government as possible with the aim of weakening the DA's position in the government.

First: the more smaller parties in the MPG to whom positions had to be assigned, the less there would be for the DA.

Second: The more parties involved, the less dependent the ANC would be on the DA to stay in office. The more parties (apart from the DA) joining the government, the closer the sum of the seats of the ANC and the other MPG parties in the NA approaches the two hundred mark, which enables it (the ANC) to do two things: (i) govern as a workable minority government without the DA, and therefore limit its (the ANC's) loss of office; and (ii) ward off possible motions of no confidence in the National Assembly. In this way, the ANC promotes its goal of mitigating its weaker grip on office and, if push comes to shove, remain in office as a minority with an assortment of smaller parties.

The DA's aim was exactly the opposite. It would prefer the MPG to consist of as few parties as possible: the ANC, the DA, IFP and possibly one or two others. This would have given the DA a larger share in the government and make the ANC more dependent on and vulnerable to DA policy pressure and being outshone by DA ministerial performance.

That is precisely why the DA objected when other parties joined the proposed MPG without its consent. According to the DA, the existing parties to the agreement, including itself, first had to give permission for further parties to join.

However, the provision on the entry of new parties in the Declaration of Intent was cleverly – perhaps cunningly – formulated, because their entry was not subject to approval of the ANC and the DA. Approval for new-commers joining the Declaration of Intent only became a requirement after new MPG was finalised.

The Declaration of Intent therefore prevented the DA from blocking new entries. Consequently, to its own disadvantage and to the advantage of the ANC, the DA had to accept an ever-larger MPG, which significantly weakened its (the DA's) position.

MPG’s at provincial level

The Declaration of Intent is intended towards the formation a majority government, that is, a government securing the support of the majority of the members of the National Assembly. Hence it provides for members of various parties to be included in the cabinet and appointed to chair parliamentary portfolio committees.

It goes without saying that the DA would also want the same approach to obtain at provincial level, especially in Gauteng where the ANC's victory over the DA was scant. However, the Declaration of Intent does not apply directly to provinces. It serves merely as a guideline for what the approach to provincial governments could be.

Gauteng Premier, Panyanza Lesufi, was therefore free to offer the DA only three out of ten (excluding the Premier himself) portfolios in the Gauteng Executive Council. When the DA rejected this offer, Lesufi, at variance with the tenor of the Declaration of Intent, formed a minority government, falling way short of representing the majority in the provincial legislature.

In consequence the DA has no share in the government of the province which still is the heartbeat of the South African economy – this even though it (the DA) has only 6 members less than the ANC in the provincial legislature (22 against 28). Lesufi is likely to have concocted a surreptitious deal with the EFF safeguarding his government from motions of no confidence.

Save for KZN where the bottom fell from underneath the ANC, on provincial level, specifically in Gauteng, the ANC also managed to weaken the DA, using effective outmanoeuvring tactics.

Conclusion

The 29 May election dealt the ANC a serious blow – its worst performance since 1994. It would have to do damage-control through negotiations. It did this by posing to the public, investment interests, and other political parties as a humble, well-intentioned, and cooperative partner. Outmanoeuvring and power struggles were seemingly not on its agenda.

However, having employed shrewd strategies of power politics towards its "partners" in forming the multi-party national government and the Gauteng provincial government, the ANC is currently occupying a much stronger position than its electoral support justifies. Judging by events since 31 May in relation to government formation, we have clearly not entered a new era of benevolent cooperation and partnership.

No, the ANC had engaged in a deft strategy of deceit in the manner of the fox. This should, however, not attract moral condemnation as if this is the terrain of private morality. It is the terrain of political contestation in which such outmanoeuvring of an adversary is no cause for moral indignation, but for accolades for clever tactics. It would benefit the public as well as the ANC's MPG “partners" to take careful note of this.

Professor Malan is constitutional jurist from Pretoria

This article was published previously in Afrikaans on Netwerk 24.

Articles two and three to follow.