EXPLAINER | What is SA’s second Government of National Unity and how did it come to be?
Craig Bailie (MA International Studies)
Critical thinker | Student of leadership | KAS Scholar | Love seeing people and spaces transformed for good | Views expressed are my own
During his national address on 30 June, President Ramaphosa called on South Africans to support the country’s second Government of National Unity (GNU).
South Africa’s first GNU, formed under different circumstances from today’s, came into existence soon after South Africa’s first democratic elections and ended in early 1997, following the withdrawal from the GNU of the then National Party.
Plenty has been said and written about South Africa's second GNU, but how many South Africans know what the GNU is and how it came into existence???????
Why did a coalition or multi-party government need to be established in the first place?
The results of South Africa’s 7th democratic elections held on 29 May were unprecedented in the country’s post-1994 history. For the first time in 30 years, South Africa’s ruling political party, the African National Congress (ANC), won less than 50 % of the votes and therefore fell short of obtaining an outright majority (more than 50 % of seats) in Parliament’s National Assembly (NA) (read here for an explanation of how votes are translated into NA seats). Occupying an outright majority of seats in the NA is the precondition for a political party to form a government.
Having won little more than 40 % of the vote during the National and Provincial Elections (NPE), and therefore, less than half the seats in the NA, the ANC couldn’t form a government on its own. It needed to secure support from one or several other political parties among the 18 represented in the NA following the elections and enter into a coalition including more than half of the NA seats.
This support building is what transpired during weeks of intense negotiations between the ANC and opposition political parties, culminating in the swearing-in of a coalition or multi-party government on 03 July, specifically a GNU Cabinet.
The journey to South Africa’s second GNU
Over the weeks that followed the official announcement of the May 29 election results, during an Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) hosted ceremony on 02 June, the ANC negotiated and expressed the willingness to negotiate with several political parties represented in the NA following the elections.
Fulfilling the Constitutional requirement that “the first sitting of the National Assembly must take place…not more than 14 days after the election result has been declared,” the NA convened for the first time on 14 June. The ceremony included the swearing-in of the “designated members of the National Assembly”, their “oath of faithfulness to the Republic and to the Constitution of South Africa”, and a vote for who should be president. Cyril Ramaphosa won the vote, finishing his acceptance speech in the early hours of the following morning.?
When the NA’s first post-election sitting commenced on 14 June, coalition government negotiations between the ANC and other parties were ongoing.
In his media statement released on the same day, Democratic Alliance (DA) leader John Steenhuisen announced that his party had signed the Statement of Intent for the formation of a GNU, alongside the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the ANC (it appears an updated statement of intent including signatures from each of the coalition parties isn’t publicly available). ?
Three days later, on 17 June, the ANC released a media statement announcing “the formation” of a GNU, citing five parties that had signed the same Statement of Intent: itself, the DA, the IFP, GOOD, and the Patriotic Alliance (PA) – a grouping that represented 273 or 68% of the seats in the NA at the time. Furthermore, the ANC invited other political parties “to reconsider and join the GNU”.
The GNU Cabinet was formed on 03 July, during the Swearing-in Ceremony of the National Executive. This could only happen after Cyril Ramaphosa was inaugurated as President (the ceremony was held on 19 June) and after he announced his new post-election multiparty National Executive (or Cabinet) on 30 June.
What is the GNU?
A GNU is a coalition or multi-party government, but it's also more than this. As mentioned earlier, a coalition or multi-party government arrangement is necessitated by the failure of the political party that received the most votes in an election to win an outright majority (more than 50 %) of seats in the NA.
South Africa’s current coalition or multi-party government involves a National Executive (also known as a Cabinet, consisting of Ministers and Deputy Ministers) mostly made up of members from the ANC but also members from each of the other political parties in the coalition.
A coalition or multi-party government is different from a one-party government which involves a National Executive entirely made up of ruling party members. In the latter case, the President retains his/her prerogative to appoint to the National Executive, someone from outside his/her party. This happened, for example, when President Ramaphosa appointed Patricia de Lille (of GOOD) as the Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure in 2019, meaning, strictly speaking, the National Executive no longer constituted a one-party government.
According to Professor William Gumede of the Wits School of Governance, the GNU is different from an “ordinary coalition” or what I call a ‘minimalist coalition of necessity’, beginning with its underlying rationale.
By a ‘minimalist coalition of necessity’, I mean a multi-party partnership that is only as big as is necessary to form a government. The GNU Cabinet that the ANC has formed alongside other political parties extends well beyond the minimum number of NA seats (more than 200) required to form a government.
While a minimalist coalition of necessity is founded primarily on the need for the political party that received the most votes in an election to occupy the necessary amount of NA seats alongside coalition parties to form a government, a GNU is motivated by “a crisis in the country” and the fact that one “party alone cannot deliver…or cannot alone tackle the crisis”.
There are further possible reasons why President Ramaphosa and the ANC opted for a GNU that involves South Africa’s biggest post-1994 Cabinet, rather than an ordinary coalition, but these fall beyond the scope of this article.
In addition to the underlying rationale, a GNU is different from a minimalist coalition of necessity because the former is characterised by majority decision-making while the latter invites and relies more upon consensus decision-making.
This shift in the nature of decision-making alongside the fact that the parties in the GNU Cabinet are diverse in their political worldviews or ideologies, is what explains the potential for decision-making in the GNU to become strained and/or delayed. The success of the GNU will depend, among other key factors such as trust, on the willingness of its party members to compromise. ?
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Who is part of the second GNU?
President Ramaphosa’s new National Executive consists of 34 cabinet ministers and 43 deputy minister positions – a total of 77 cabinet members representing 9 political parties, including the ANC, DA, IFP, PA, FF+ (Freedom Front Plus), UDM (United Democratic Movement), Aljama, GOOD, and the PAC (Pan Africanist Congress of Azania). Other parties that are part of the GNU but that do not have party members occupying ministerial positions in the National Executive include Rise Mzansi and United Africans Transformation (UAT).
This is why, while announcing his new post-election multiparty National Executive, President Ramaphosa referred to 11 parties that have “elected to work together in government [the National Executive] as well as in parliament [the legislature].” The present 11-party GNU coalition occupies 288 (or 72 %) of NA seats.
What happens to the parties that are not part of the GNU?
A total of 7 parties represented in the NA have opted out of joining the GNU. Parties that have decided against joining the GNU, for different reasons (follow the hyperlinks in this paragraph) include uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK); Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF); ActionSA; African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP); National Coloured Congress (NCC); Build One South Africa (BOSA); and African Transformation Movement (ATM). These 7 parties constitute the NA’s new political opposition.
Further reading:
For a greater understanding of South Africa’s second GNU, its consequences, and potential implications moving forward, consider reading the articles available at the underlying links:
2024-06-16 Queenin Masuabi Zuma slams GNU as ‘white-led unholy alliance’ as MK party decides to join Progressive Caucus
2024-06-25, Muhammad Hussain , EXPLAINER | Why the GNU is not legally binding, and why it should not matter, Muhammad Hussain
2024-07-01, Ferial Haffajee , Very big, very bloated, but will the government of national unity Cabinet be better?
2024-07-04 Jan Gerber and Jason Felix , GNU executive a fresh start, says Ramaphosa as ministers vow to rise above petty politics
2024-07-04, Amanda Khoza ,'Existing government policies remain in effect without exception': ANC clarifies GNU policy
2024-07-04, Rebecca Davis, Suck it up! Bloated Cabinet can be blamed on voters, says Minister in the Presidency
2024-07-04, Vinothan Naidoo , Ramaphosa made practical choices for South Africa’s multi-party cabinet – how this will help him down the line
2024-07-07, Tim Cohen , After the Bell: How long will the GNU last?
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8 个月Terrific contribution to the topic du jour! Great to point out the difference between a minimalist majoritarian coalition or more informal confidence and supply pact with another party to insulate the ANC from motions of no confidence and budget votes, and a maximalist GNU - which the ANC was probably forced to go with because of problematic optics of aligning with the DA, or MK, or EFF. The ‘crisis’ that precipitated the GNU wasn’t so much a narional crisis, but an ANC crisis. I think the unintended consequence of a consensus seeking approach in a broad GNU cabinet, regardless of why it came about, could actually be positive…