South Africa - Johannesburg - 28 May 2024 - Vote2024 - South African opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) federal leader John Steenhuisen, speaking during interviews with members of the media at the National Results Operations Centre (ROC), Gallagher convention centre in Midrand. Picture: Itumeleng English/Independent Newspaper
FROM here, things will not get any better for the DA.
The ink of our Thursday editorial, questioning the role of the DA in the Government of National Unity (GNU), had barely dried when the ANC, through its President Cyril Ramaphosa, signed the Expropriation Bill.
This obviously has not gone down well with the DA, which accuses Ramaphosa of not consulting fellow GNU partners before putting pen to paper.
As such DA leader John Steenhuisen has declared a GNU dispute to highlight their displeasure at the signing of the bill they intend challenging in court.
On the other hand, the ANC correctly points out that the signing of the Bill reflected its continued implementation of resolutions adopted at the 54th and 55th National Conferences, as well as the commitments outlined in the ANC’s 2024 Election Manifesto.
It is precisely at the above point that we have asked what the point of being in the GNU when the DA hardly got anything in its way.
If the DA plan was to keep the EFF and MK party out of power by blocking them from forming partnership with the ANC, then its backfiring spectacularly. Its voters must be wondering when will their party use the GNU to advance its own resolutions and policies, just like the ANC. Or if it was to protect Ramaphosa from being removed over the Phala Phala scandal, as DA critics have repeatedly claimed, then the party of Steenhuisen is executing that quite well.
Whatever the case, ActionSA’s Lerato Ngobeni aptly captures it when she says: “This latest chapter in the chronicles of a co-opted opposition, silenced by Cabinet perks, exposes a multi-party coalition of convenience where former opposition parties have abandoned their principles to become enablers of the very same failed ANC policies that voters decisively rejected in May 2024.”
The voters are indeed watching and the 2026 local government elections are around the corner. Only then we will see the cost of this marriage of convenience, commonly referred to as the GNU. Judging by how things are going, it may not even get that far.
Cape Times
Related Topics: