South Africa: Is it the time for unity or is it just the end of the ANC?

It was always clear that the African National Congress (ANC) was headed for political and electoral decline in the 2024 elections. Several political analysts and ANC watchers have written the political obituary of Africa's oldest liberation movement. And some prominent ANC members have publicly predicted its demise. What even the most astute political analysts and observers did not foresee was that the ANC would be forced to form a government with the Democratic Alliance (DA). It was widely expected that the ANC would easily ally itself with its two offshoots, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and Umkhonto weSizwe. The coming together of the ANC and the DA to form a government of national unity, therefore, not only demonstrates the reality of the strangest of bedfellows, but also the possibility of politics as the art of the impossible and the likelihood of the very unlikely. In political terms, the oil and water metaphor does not even come close to capturing the historical relationship between the two political outfits, the former a liberation movement and the latter an arguably liberal and neo-liberal political party with colonial and apartheid beliefs and practices. The current alliance raises one important question: who benefits from it?

An alliance that cements the slow death of the ANC

It might as well be politically suicidal for an African liberation movement to ally itself in government with a party that has its political history in representing and defending some colonial and imperial political ideals, as the DA has openly done.

The fact that significant numbers of black South Africans punished the ANC by either abstaining or voting for another party – all of which helped bring the DA into government – is evidence that the weaponisation of the history of the liberation struggle and the tales of the heroism of the black liberation fighters are no longer convincing to a population that is growing impatient for tangible liberation, especially the youth. And indeed, for the majority of black South Africans, the dreams of liberation from apartheid have collapsed into post-apartheid nightmares, exacerbated by the emergence of a black economic and political elite class of conspicuous consumers whose lifestyles laugh at the poverty of the majority.

For many observers, this government of national unity spells the end of the ANC as we know it and the beginning of a post-ANC South Africa, governed by coalitions and alliances of various kinds, as black voters increasingly lose faith in the ANC. In such a context, it is fair to say that the DA's political and electoral growth is not due to its growing appeal to South Africans, but to the growing anger of black voters at a liberation movement that continues to squander the goodwill of the people and negate the goals of liberation.

The trial of the ANC

Worse still, the unexpected government of national unity (GNU) involving the ANC and the DA puts the ANC on trial for its very existence as a governing liberation movement.

If this GNU succeeds in delivering public goods and services to South Africans, eradicating corruption and improving governance, the ANC will be exposed to South Africans as incompetent and the DA as productive and trustworthy, fit to govern the republic.  If the GNU fails to deliver and/or collapses, the ANC will again be the loser as the apparent leader within the union.  The question, then, is whether there will be an ANC to talk about after this historic experiment with a government of national unity that has brought together strange political bedfellows and historic rivals. There is no doubt that whatever happens to the GNU, failure or success, the DA will emerge as the winner.

If the GNU succeeds, the DA can claim to have come to civilise the ANC and save South Africa. In case of failure, the DA can go to South Africans and claim that they have tried and failed to improve the ANC and therefore South Africans must vote for the DA to save a political future for the republic. As such, either way, left or right, this GNU is a dramatisation and culmination of the electoral and political decline of the ANC as a ruling liberation movement in South Africa.

When the elites go marching in

We can never exhaust or overstate the ANC's difficulties as a liberation movement in decline, reduced to the status and positionality of any other struggling political party in the Republic, Africa and the Global South. For a titanic liberation movement of the size of the ANC to be forced by the electorate and the elites to co-govern with such a historic political opponent and rival as the DA is not only a dramatic but a spectacular decline that could look like death itself.

But another dimension of the GNU is that political elites of a ruling liberation movement and its political opposition have come together to share political power and all the privileges that go with it at the expense and behind the backs of South Africans. This GNU, in form and content, has not been decided by the voters, nor has it been approved by South Africans at large, but by enterprising politicians in boardrooms and other elite circles.  It is possible that the ANC and the DA have finally found each other and will now use any means necessary to protect their newfound power from the unhappy South African electorate and the wider population of the republic.  After all, the South Africans who registered to vote (27.8 million of the 43 million South Africans who are over 18) and those who actually went to the polls (16.3 million or less than 40% of the eligible voting population) are a tiny fraction of the total South African population. GNU or no GNU, South Africa could be under the potential tyranny of a tiny but elite and powerful minority.  Moreover, both the ANC and the DA are made up of politicians who do not usually have a reputation for resisting the temptation to opportunistically seek, find and retain power at all costs.

An uncertain future for South Africans and South Africa's foreign policy

African political analysts, both inside and outside South Africa, have reason to be concerned about South Africa's role in African and world affairs after the advent of the GNU. Many questions have no clear answers. For example, with the DA in a political union with the ANC in government, will the issue of justice for Palestine still be important or will it be frozen? South Africa's participation in the progressive economic bloc of the BRICS, led by South Africa, Russia, China and India in the Global South, could be reduced to mere posturing with the Euro-American-centric DA in government with the ANC. What will happen to South Africa's involvement in the DRC conflict, which could be ended through peace talks?

Meanwhile, South Africans are wondering about the fate of the controversial but progressive National Health Insurance scheme now that the DA, which opposes it, is in government.  Black economic empowerment and the welfare state, which the ANC government has promised for three decades and failed to deliver, could disappear from the government's agenda with the DA's entry into the corridors of power in South Africa. In any case, time will tell whether the DA has finally overcome and subdued the ANC.

Has a post-ANC South Africa arrived?

Party coalitions and governing coalitions are rarely symmetrical. Often one party swallows another party or parties. So the question is whether the ANC has swallowed the DA, or whether the DA has finally swallowed the ANC and compromised it forever. There is little doubt that, politically, the DA is the ultimate beneficiary of the GNU. Political analysts such as Roger Southall may be right to say that the GNU may yet be a sign that the ANC as a liberation movement is finished and what we have left is just another political party among other political parties.

Nevertheless, it is conceivable that the ANC could recover from its political and electoral decline to its historic position as the dominant liberation movement in South Africa. One way of doing this would be for the ANC to rediscover itself as a liberation movement and overcome the temptation to be a political party. For this to be possible, the ANC must clearly define South Africa's national interest, take a leading role in reforming the international financial institutions, implement South Africa's pan-African agenda, promote the interests of the global South and participate in redefining the rules of governance institutions such as the United Nations. Another way would be for the ANC to listen to South Africa's youth, who are the political pulse and future of the country and the liberation movement.

If the ANC fails to do these things, it may simply resign itself to a post-ANC South Africa where it will be one political party among many others.

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Dr William J Mpofu is a Researcher at the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies(WiCDS), University of the Witwatersrand, and Senior Research Associate of Good Governance Africa (GGA), SADC Region. He writes in his personal capacity.