Listening to Helen Zille’s interview with the Frederick Newman Foundation, one could not help but ponder the sincerity of the political parties that form part of the so-called government of national unity (GNU).
The sincerity I refer to is to the voters.
Some of the revelations that Zille makes confirm many of the murmurings and unhappiness among ANC members, many of whom insist that the current administration is essentially a coalition between the ANC and the DA.
We saw the ANC fracture further at the suggestion of getting into bed with the DA.
But for the president, the alternative meant that he would have to relinquish his position and give into the demands of the MK Party and EFF.
Zille said: “The ANC could not do a straight coalition with the DA because they would have blown apart internally. They were too divided.
“So, from the beginning, Cyril Ramaphosa came up with this notion of a government of national unity, which he thought would be a better concept of selling the coalition to his own party.
“Now this, of course, is not a government of national unity because it would have brought all parties together, which would have had to include the EFF and the MK Party.
“It still gave the president the fig leave he needed to bring in all sorts of smaller parties to say: ‘I am not in coalition with the DA’.
“Now the truth is we are in a coalition because a coalition means if a party withdraws from the coalition, the government falls.”
What the DA boss is saying is that Ramaphosa knew then and now that he is safer being in bed with the DA.
Phala Phala saga
One of the deals offered to him was the removal of the Phala Phala scrutiny from the table.
The peppering of his administration with smaller parties was to essentially pull the wool over the eyes of voters.
These are ministers and deputy ministers who are grateful for their appointments to the point that none have an issue with a bloated executive.
Zille further described in detail the strategies that she and her party deployed throughout the negotiations in forcing the ANC to concede to the DA’s demands.
“Now, none of the other nine parties in the coalition have any leverage at all on the ANC or the government,” she said.
“They can pull out tomorrow, and that could make no difference. When you have no leverage, that means that you’re a captive in that government.
“The DA will never be captive because we have leverage — huge leverage. These other parties are there at the gift of Ramaphosa.
“If they irritated him, he could kick them out tomorrow.”
The African Rights Advocacy was outraged by Zille’s further comments when she said: “The strongest lever the DA had by far [during the negotiations] is the value of the rand.”
Zille described how she tracked the value of the rand and watched it drop after calling a journalist to report that the ANC had not pitched for a negotiation meeting.
She said she was making a point to Ramaphosa and his negotiating team: “Don’t mess with us.”
Public protector intervention
The non-profit organisation (NPO) promptly requested public protector Kholeka Gcaleka to investigate Zille’s suggestions that “the DA manipulated the rand’s value to their advantage by disseminating negative reports during the GNU negotiations with the ANC”, said the NPO’s secretary-general, Vuyiswa Tyhalwa.
It will be interesting to see whether Gcaleka will have the appetite to look into the complaint.
Whether she does or not, the opposition benches are gearing themselves for a fight against a crumbling ANC, only held together by the thread that is Ramaphosa’s faction.
The DA is aware of this and is entrenching itself in the positions that Ramaphosa has blessed the party with. And the blue party will not be told what to do.
This is most visible with Agriculture Minister John Steenhuizen’s appointment of a racist and fascist, including people with only matriculation to positions of influence.
This is happening when the majority of employees are black, and these actions are executed by the leader of the DA.
It just makes one wonder.
