ANTHONY BUTLER: Ramaphosa seems to be enjoying the GNU ride

President Cyril Ramaphosa gives the impression that he is enjoying presidential office for the first time. On the face of it, this is surprising. After all, the ANC has suffered a decline of electoral fortunes under his leadership. 

There are perhaps three reasons for Ramaphosa’s seeming contentment. Even his many critics accept that he has played a political blinder since the elections. His post-election speech at the Electoral Commission results centre in Midrand at the start of June proclaimed that “our people expect all parties to work together within the framework of our constitution and address whatever challenges we encounter peacefully and in accordance with the prescripts of our constitution and the rule of law”. 

The government of national unity (GNU) conceit unveiled soon afterwards was well understood by senior ANC and IFP politicians who were involved in Nelson Mandela’s GNU. One DA leader had even written an extended analysis of the benefits of this first iteration. While these parties had prepared carefully for GNU, the EFF and MK party evidently had not. 

EFF leader Julius Malema’s sartorial conversion in 2024, swapping red T-shirts for tailored business suits, suggests he misread tentative offers of high office emanating from ANC brokers. That he insisted on the removal of Ramaphosa as a precondition for participation in a coalition deal indicates he was disastrously misled. The MK party’s anti-constitutionalist programme likewise ruled it out of the GNU on the terms that Ramaphosa so carefully elaborated. 

The president made the GNU palatable to a wider constituency in the ANC in an underhand but also ingenious manner by ignoring the terms of the statement of intent that supposedly governed it. He shamelessly applied non-functional but decorative fig leaves such as Gayton Mackenzie, Patricia de Lille and Bantu Holomisa to cover the embarrassing extremities of the grand coalition. 

The second factor behind Ramaphosa’s good cheer may be the simplification of ANC internal management the election has brought. MK and the EFF have attracted politicians with legal difficulties, and spokespeople with complex psychological challenges, each of whom would otherwise be making Ramaphosa’s life difficult inside the ANC. It is arguably better to have Mzwanele Manyi or Carl Niehaus inside the tent p*ssing out than outside p*ssing in, but it is surely better still to have them on a different campsite altogether. 

A third reason for the president’s newly placid demeanour may be a fresh chance to shape policy somewhat freed from vested interests in the ANC’s tripartite alliance. On economic policy, the SACP now looks even more ridiculous than is customary because its general secretary has been berating a GNU in which its own leaders are participating at ministerial level. 

The Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill that was recently signed into law may be pitifully inadequate — it ignores performance measurement and union-linked corruption — but it has one consequential element: muddying school governing body control over language policy.

Any fair-minded observer knows there are schools that use language as an instrument of racial exclusion. But we have also seen racial populists such as Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi building political capital by exploiting the predicament of black parents. 

Regarding National Health Insurance, in which current symbolic policy reflects the interests of ANC ministers, unions and profiteers, the opposition has prioritised the demands of insurance and hospital companies and a narrow band of private health beneficiaries.

It is not impossible at all that the GNU will bring is pragmatic compromises that improve overall outcomes in both cases, and perhaps — if the coalition survives — in many others besides.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.