BRYAN ROSTRON: Strange ballad of the g-nu

The government of national unity (GNU) is a strange creature. It doesn’t quite know what kind of beast it is yet — unlike The Gnu Song of the late comic duo Flanders and Swan, which confidently proclaims: “I’m not a camel or a kangaroo/So let me introduce/I’m neither man nor moose/Oh g-no, g-no, g-no/I’m a gnu.”

Our GNU, by contrast, is a volatile mix. Several of its constituent parts strain in opposite directions, and even within the separate member parties there are deep internal divisions. Can this hybrid GNU pull together?

The GNU enjoys two honeymoon advantages. The troublesome EFF is something of a busted flush, for now at least. And, more significantly, the official opposition is less a political party than Jacob Zuma’s private revenge vehicle, with the MK party represented in parliament by a who’s who of the disgraced, many culled from the index of the Zondo state capture commission.

So, the biggest menace to the coalition’s survival is internal, from either ideology or opportunism. In future its minor parties might be tempted to rock this rainbow Noah’s Ark for opportunistic gain, but could probably be bought off cheaply.

That leaves the spectre of ideology. Any cohesion on this is spread wafer thin among the 10 parties that have signed up to the pact. Toss in the factor of race and you have a recipe for combustion. As columnist Jonny Steinberg wrote recently: “The election came dispiritingly close to resembling a racial census. Nine out of 10 black voters chose the ANC or its populist offshoots. Eight out of 10 white voters chose the DA. Three decades into democracy, the task of getting significant proportions of black and white South Africans to vote for the same party remains elusive.” (“SA’s electoral system enforces voting along racial lines”, September 6).

Nevertheless, the fact that there’s any accord at all is renewed testament to SA’s ability to bestride irreconcilable contradictions. The burning, potentially divisive question is: when is a GNU not a GNU? Answer: when it’s a coalition.

On this the DA federal chair and general secretary of the SACP are in unlikely agreement. Helen Zille claims the weird 10-headed GNU is a smoke screen to disguise the fact that it is really a coalition between the ANC and the DA.

The SACP’s vociferous Solly Mapaila has a similar take. In his view, this is no GNU but a cynical coalition of capitalists. The ANC is a “sell-out”, he thunders. The implication from both Zille and Mapaila is that the other eight parties were tacked on only to fool or appease the ANC rank and file.

The SACP general secretary lamented that he’s having “sleepless nights” at this act of “class suicide”. But Mapaila’s insomnia did not prevent four other SACP leaders from accepting ministerial posts, led by former general secretary Blade Nzimande, moved from higher education to science, with three other party members in deputy ministerial roles.

Such contortions in the frayed “tripartite alliance”, along with the endlessly back-stabbing factions of the ANC, plus internal divisions within the other GNU partners, suggest “coalition” troubles may arise from within the separate member parties rather than between them. Each party has to keep its dissimilar supporters “on side”.

This prompts an unpleasant thought. What could possibly explain John Steenhuisen’s bizarre appointment, now rescinded, of a bigot as his chief of staff? Given Steinberg’s breakdown of the racial vote in the 2024 election, could the new DA minister have been Machiavellian rather than merely foolish?

After all, even a cursory search would have revealed that Roman Cabanac had deleted multiple posts of apartheid thinking. Could it be that Steenhuisen feared that hitching his party to a majority black government would alienate the more retrograde DA whites, so hiring Cabanac would represent reassurance of (let’s be polite) a continuing Eurocentric bias? 

Whatever the motive, it brings into question Steenhuisen’s judgment. This self-inflicted fiasco forced the DA to distance itself from its own leader, and within the delicate balance of our fledgling GNU his party has probably been weakened. Consequently, Steenhuisen has been cruelly exposed as not the person to lead the DA any further out of its electoral cul-de-sac, leaving genuine liberals muttering Flanders and Swan’s imprecation in the Gnu song: “I wish I could g-nash my teeth at you.” 

In view of all these contradictions, so fantastic as to be almost caricatures, can our hydra-headed GNU survive and even prosper? Impossible to g-know. 

• Rostron is a journalist and author.