If, as the saying goes, a week is a long time in politics, where does that leave the 100 days used traditionally for new governments or administrations to sit back a little and take stock?
About 10 days ago the senior party in the new government of national unity (GNU), what many simply view as a coalition and marriage of convenience between the ANC and the former official opposition DA, held a jamboree to mark the milestone since the toenadering after the May 29 elections.
We stand to be corrected, but Sunday World is hard-pressed to recall any such merrymaking of the first 100 days of a government even after the liberatory elections of April 27, 1994.
If we are not mistaken, we pause to ponder what could be there to celebrate in a party of liberation finding common ground and reason to team up with a party known to defend most of what stands in opposition to the liberation ideals of the vast majority of the people of this country.
The jury on the GNU is still out and will return its verdict at the general elections in 2029 unless there are dramatic events that lead to early elections.
The DA, the second biggest party in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s patchwork government has throughout the early days of the arrangement sought to make noise we can only perceive to be meant for their traditional constituency to assure them that it has not sold out. It has consistently stood in opposition to such gains of the past 30 years of our democracy as affirmative action and black economic empowerment in all its variations.
It has also stood firm in opposition to measures meant to bring a more equitable society free of the shackles apartheid bequeathed black people, in particular Africans. That should explain why the DA found reason to oppose, for example, the Bela Bill, which Ramaphosa finally signed into law a month or so ago.
Sections of the act are still under review as a compromise the president sought with his new-found buddies to be allowed to put pen to paper. It remains to be seen how the disputed issues will be settled, and at whose expense. Will the interests and dreams of the black African child again be put on the back burner to appease those who have always had privilege? We wonder.
There was some brinkmanship brought to bear days leading to the appointed hour with threats of pulling out of the GNU if Ramaphosa went ahead and signed the bill into legislation.
Such threats, we reckon, will be par for the course in the life of so precarious a government as the GNU. It doesn’t make for certainty and stability. Granted, however, the centre has held for 100 days and counting, hence the little gig we witnessed a few days ago.
What we will always pray and hope for, and fight for, if needs be, is when such unity is sustained at the expense of those who have been at the wrong end of the injustice visited on the people of this land for centuries of white dominance, initially under colonialism and then apartheid.
We see no reason yet to celebrate.
