PHAKAMISA MAYABA / In 1994, when Madiba was cobbling together a government of national unity (GNU), his position was unenviable. No matter which way he played it, it was clear he could not please everybody. Through his reconciliatory offensive, he was able to allay white fears around the threat of a swart gevaar that supposedly wanted to grab white-owned land and drive the ‘settlers’ back into the ocean.
On the flip side, the majority had spoken. Out with minority rule and apartheid, voted the previously marginalised. For all the ANC’s struggle campaign and sacrifice, there it was — 62.65% of the national vote as its starting block for wedging forth on a mandate to right the wrongs of the past.
It all fell into place at the right time, when even apartheid’s most craven supporters weren’t really sure anymore, with 68.6% of them voting ‘yes’ in the famous referendum of 1992. When, in the face of the Berlin Wall crumbling to signify the end of that other ideological war, the domestic armed struggle had no idea what to do with the Makarovs and Molotovs. Throw them into the sea along with the pangas, as Madiba had instructed? Or deploy them to their logical conclusion: slash the throats of the former oppressor, and forcefully reclaim the land? Sadly, some of those weapons wound up in the bloody tribal wars that flared up in the years leading up to the nation’s first democratic election.
More than anybody, this must have weighed heavily on the old man. Faced with a militant and conspiratorial far right, and an Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) hell-bent on usurping the role of the Mass Democratic Revolution (MDR), Madiba must have been desperate not to seem like a deferential house n****r on his unpopular crusade to extend an olive branch to the Afrikaner. To lift the William Webb Ellis trophy in a Springbok jersey that invited the ire of some parts of black South Africa, as he proudly told everybody that he read Afrikaans literature – a language that many found synonymous with ‘the oppressor’.
To make a national hero of the ‘white Afrikaner woman’ who alerted the authorities when Janusz Waluś had just pumped several bullets into the SA Communist Party leader Chris Hani. To allow for the ‘sunset clauses’ that gave white civil servants a stake in the new South Africa, and ‘helped to break the deadlock in the negotiations process,’ according to the Apartheid Museum website.
For these concessions, Madiba found his credentials challenged among hard-line comrades, particularly in the PAC, as some talked of him as a ‘sell-out’, a tag that populists and those who claim extreme to be on the left continue to hurl ad nauseam.
In a bid to cast themselves as those whose birthright it is to unshackle the downtrodden from the bondage of white monopoly capital, EFF leader Julius Malema and Andile Mngxitama, former EFF MP, founder and former president of Black First Land First (BLF), and now MKP sycophant, have nursed a particular obsession with such narratives. ‘It’s not an exaggeration, Mngxitama once wrote,’ to say Mandela’s leadership style, characterized by accommodation with the oppressors, will be forgotten, if not rejected within a generation.’
Comes Cyril Ramaphosa, the billionaire president who finds himself in Madiba’s shoes and recently appointed his motley GNU Cabinet. Probably more than his predecessor, he will find the criticism harsher, given that through Mbeki and Mandela, his antagonists have had enough practice to sharpen the diss and popularise it, with the hope of making it stick.
In their arsenal, they will whip out how, even during apartheid, Ramaphosa, then serving as general secretary of the Union of Mineworkers, had it far easier than most anti-apartheid activists. Already they are casting him as a chizboy* who got insanely wealthy even though, according to Malema, he doesn’t produce anything and has relied on government business and white capitalists to accumulate his fortune.
Just as the latter part of Zuma’s presidency was characterized by ‘pay back the money’ in regard to the undue state-sponsored alterations to his Nkandla homestead, Ramaphosa will likely find that the ad hominems seek to portray the ‘ANC of Ramaphosa’ as one of unadulterated elitism which doesn’t mind selling the revolution to the highest bidder. Therefore, Ramaphosa would’ve had to be surgical when deciding who would constitute his Cabinet: too many DA ministers in critical economic portfolios, and he’s pandering to the Stellenbosch money men. Not enough of them, and he’s not playing fair and is operating in bad faith.
Analysts for various publications have said as much, feeling that the DA has gotten a bad deal in as far as proportional representation goes. But I’m not sure that they are being fair themselves, given the maturity that, for the most part, the ANC has shown towards the formation of this government. No matter the optimism or cynicism towards the GNU, it’s clearly all touch-and-go, and even the DA has seemingly come to terms with the fact that on some previously contentious issues it’ll have to learn to put the gloves away and to bite its tongue.
The new Cabinet has ballooned from 61 to 75, and requires a budget somewhere north of R1 billion a year while flying in the facde of previous government commitments to trim it down. This contradicts Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana’s criticism of the Commission for the Remuneration of Public Office Bearers which had recommended a 3.8% increase for all office bearers last year. If it’s any consolation, they will eventually bag a 3% hike, itself a slap in the face of the poor, not to mention the many thousands with no work to turn up to.
But nobody in the GNU, not even the DA’s John Steenhuisen, who harped on for years that the executive were little more than a pack of incompetents who playing Candy Crush on state-sponsored iPads while chowing themselves dik on the sly, has said anything about it. Perhaps he’s experienced a Damascus moment, now that he’s been rubbing shoulders with the fat cats of the ‘broad church’. We understand that conversions are not an uncommon thing in the hallowed pews of power. One moment the oke is known to knock back Klippies and Coke and talk cricket, next he’s swirling pot-stilled single malts and asking how Sundowns are doing on the log.
Objecting points of order … dololo! No hand raised on the part of our man to say, thanks but no thanks, Comrade Cyril. You mos know we don’t roll like that here in the DA … the cadre deployment thing, for us it’s merit; certificates, experience, you know – or the highway.
But obviously looking pleased with himself on the day of being sworn in as minister of agriculture, such an objection would’ve been the furthest thing on his mind. Not to make a meal of it, but aside from just holding a matric certificate, Steenhuisen comes across as the sort of bloke who’d rather pay somebody to plant a bed of potatoes than do it himself. In which case, he’s in luck. The guys he’s been pointing fingers at for the same sins will likely advise him not to worry. What does he think the army of support staff – never mind that they’re a burden on taxpayers – are for? Duh!
My first impression is that, for the most part, the executive seems like a ceremonial entity; more anodyne bureaucrats than punctilious know-hows. If not, then explain why the skills of some of them are inconsistent with their portfolios. Or why a minister who performed dismally in one portfolio would be recycled in another – usually one more demanding than the one he or she messed up.
The appointment of the PAC’s Mzanele Nyhontso to Land Reform and Rural Development is instructive. Ramaphosa swiftly cleaved land reform away from Steenhuisen, and put it in the hands of a party whose rallying cry is ‘izwe lethu’ – our land – to give the impression that the ANC is still committed to land reform. A white face from a party that some accuse of being an advocate of private property rights at the expense of ignoring to address the land question would not have done the president any favours.
The goal, it would appear, is to preserve business as usual, just fronted by different faces on the government website. In this GNU, seemingly said faces fulfill a two-pronged purpose: 1) to keep President Cyril Ramaphosa’s friends close enough to shield him against a possible mutiny; and 2) to facilitate the sort of GNU that will be amenable, compliant, and not prone to outlandish outbursts and conspiratorial power plays. The last thing the ANC needs is a coalition partner who starts asking about Marikana and the sealed #CR17 campaign reports, accuses the IEC of vote-rigging, and challenges the Public Protector’s report on Phala Phala.
Unsurprisingly, the leftists have been sulking, but a deefening silence has rung out from our friends in the liberal press. By the look of things, to them, previous talking points like ‘merit’ and ‘scraping race-based laws’ have been pushed on to the back burner, now that the calamity of an ANC-EFF-MKP coalition has been avoided. Rather the not-so-exceptionally-educated Steenhuisen in a ministry that he might not be clued-up on than the toy?-gun-toting Julius Malema getting anywhere near the levers of real power. Don’t even get us started on that guy who’s always singing about being handed his machine gun.
From the onset, this is the outcome liberal entities have been stumping for: the DA getting a swing on the wicket of real decision-making powers. These pundits use the DA’s governance record as validation that it is probably the only party which could improve the nation’s moribund economic prospects. The ANC, however, doesn’t appear to be thinking about governance; on its mind is the more primal desire to consolidate and survive. Hence, having been MIA for a while, I had to scratch my head going over the new Cabinet days after the official do.
Man! Angie Motshekga, the minister who leaves the basic education department almost literally in s**t street. Kids drowning in pit latrines at rural schools. Stuffy, overcrowded classrooms manned by incompetent teachers, who oversee the worst literacy and numeracy levels on the planet. Thought the lady would be well advised to rekindle her teaching career, but instead Ramaphosa figured she would do better taking charge of the troops.
Gwede Mantashe, seen as the gruff-voiced barrier to renewable energy, is also back in the minerals and energy sector sans electricity, despite being heavily criticised for what some see as a stubborn and backward attitude in favour of coal. More than any other, his appointment illuminates the true nature of the GNU. Gwede is card-sharp — an eloquent man of words who commands substantial sway within the trade union movement and the SACP. He is not the sort of guy you can simply get rid of and live to see another day in seat of power. And he’s also not one you want to agitate by demotion.
As these guys settle into their roles, one can’t dispel the whiff of impunity and unaccountability in the corridors of power. Clearly, the whole notion of promising to fire non-performing ministers in previous years was a ruse to quiet down detractors. Ramaphosa’s concern is more ANC or self-preservation than to jack up his underlings. That the DA has gone along with some of these appointments suggests that they’ve gone from an active opposition government to pliable partners.
Take the National Health Insurance Bill, for example, which the party had said it would challenge in court. In an about-turn, it has put its to litigate on hold, preferring instead to find a solution through the GNU. I’m not sure what this would mean for South Africa, but one is tempted to hope that in the absence of a people-centred government, the next port of call would be our Chapter 9 institutions, especially the Office of the Public Protector. But given her report on Phala Phala, there are those who might not be sure exactly on whose side she’s on.
* Chizboy is township slang for a spoilt brat, or someone who grew up with a silver spoon in their mouth.
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FEATURED IMAGE: Happier days for the ANC … President Cyril Ramaphosa with members of his cabinet. 2018.
This is an edited version of an article that first appeared on Phakamisa Mayaba’s website, eParkeni. Used with permission.
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