The government’s latest growth projections are lower than population growth. That means the average voter’s life won’t improve by 2029. Some politicians will pay. Most likely it will be the government of national unity (GNU).
Surely that’s the lesson of the anti-incumbent elections in this mega-election year of 2024, from the US and Germany, to Japan, France and Britain, and even Botswana and SA?
Botswana’s Botswana Democratic Party is gone. Mozambique’s Frelimo was re-elected in a disputed election. And in Namibia, Swapo is vulnerable for the first time in 34 years.
To be fair, the GNU got off to a far better start than Keir Starmer, the new prime minister who took the reins in Britain around the same time. Starmer’s polls tanked within weeks. Most important, he has not demonstrated a coherent plan to get Britain back on track. Germany’s Olaf Scholz’s government is too unpopular to complete its term.
There are no signs of real trouble in the GNU so far. Failure to create jobs and fix broken services are the real threats to the GNU, not media spats between ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula and DA federal council chairperson Helen Zille.
The parties’ public disagreements are part of the unwritten rules of the deal. Both have to protect their constituencies. The disagreements over the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act, National Health Insurance (NHI) and the SABC Bill are real, but both sides have the will to manage them.
Cyril Ramaphosa and John Steenhuisen have factored that in. All reports are they work well together in private. Both recognised keeping the other’s constituency on board was necessary. This mirrors the Codesa relationship between Nelson Mandela and then president F W de Klerk.
As the party organisers, Zille is rightly obsessed with not being “Nick Clegged” — the junior coalition party that gets clobbered next election — and Mbalula has to show his supporters that the DA isn’t bullying him.
Besides the unresolved problems of Gauteng, which are very serious, the GNU spats are like kabuki theatre, stylised symbolic dance not to be taken literally. For the present, the ANC and DA are locked into the GNU together. Their real enemy is not producing enough jobs or fixing enough broken services to deserve a vote of confidence next election. It’s a global problem: technology and geopolitics have changed economies, and legacy political parties have failed to adapt. Leaders don’t have answers relevant to this new order.
Unions that used to be the voice of the non-university educated working class are at their weakest in a century, and the parties that represented them have not found ways to defend their interests. In SA, union members form a small fraction of the numbers of the unemployed. Electorates replace governments that fail, even if the replacement doesn’t have a clue either. An election is a single cheque, not a stop order. Voters can always write a different one next election.
To earn that next cheque, SA voters need to see substantial job-creation and better service provision through decent economic growth, and noticeably restored municipalities, provincial and national government and state-owned enterprises.
For the GNU, an early test will be if the honeymoon spirit of confidence among voters lasts. Will the country turn the corner after more than a decade of despair?
Early by-elections have been positive for the GNU parties — the DA, ANC, IFP and PA. The public feels hopeful, and the parties have benefited.
To earn that next cheque, SA voters need to see substantial job-creation and better service provision through decent economic growth, and noticeably restored municipalities, provincial and national government and state-owned enterprises (SOEs).
On the first count — job-creating growth — the GNU is on the road to failure. We know that because the government has told us.
The Treasury, Reserve Bank and IMF forecasts all put our growth rate between 1.2% and 1.8% for the next three years — the crucial period by the end of which the political actors will be making their decisions about the future. More people will be on the streets without jobs. This says that the GNU will fall.
The other team offers the hope of an alternative. Their narrative is compelling. The GNU doesn’t deliver to poor black voters because it’s a “government of neocolonial unity”. But if the MK party takes over, it will nationalise the Reserve Bank, confiscate white land and stop the courts overriding parliament’s decisions. Then black South Africans will finally have a better life.
That formula will produce capital flight, market collapse and a potentially generational economic decline, but a jobless dropout in a squatter camp is not following the JSE.
The 2026 municipal elections will produce another shock to the system. Populist politicians will ask whether major institutions have shown obvious turnarounds since the formation of the GNU. Will residents of Johannesburg, eThekwini, Tshwane, Nelson Mandela Bay, be receiving services? Populists will blame the GNU.
MK party secretary-general Floyd Shivambu has done some calculations. Based on the May election returns, “in [KwaZulu-Natal] MK was number one in 36 out of 44 municipalities, with a decisive majority (above 50%) and 40% in 20 — including eThekwini,” he told the SWMX podcast.
MK party’s support rose as high as 76% in some wards, and it clocked in at third place in the Ekurhuleni metro in Gauteng. According to Shivambu, the only two metros left where the ANC dominates are Buffalo City (formerly East London), with 53% in the national elections, and Mangaung (formerly Bloemfontein), with 49%. The rest are gone.
It’s plausible, but his party has its own problems. With internal ructions, firings, and an already robust lawfare between members, their first two years in municipal government may be chaotic. But don’t bank on it.
Jacob Zuma has designed the party in his image, and he has all the power. Internally, his monopoly of power is called the “purposeful exclusion of an elective congress”. That means Zuma decides.
Among the inexperienced amateurs on their parliamentary bench, there are also experienced people. Brian Molefe, Mzwanele Manyi, Lucky Montana and ex-Judge John Hlophe, could be deployed as mayors. It wouldn’t be hard for them to do a better job running some towns for a few years. They all have the same motivation as US president-elect Donald Trump. They want rehabilitation, revenge and retribution. Zuma is setting the stage for them to get it.
In 2027, with the ANC congress choosing its next president, the DA leadership up for a vote, and the other main parties finalising strategies for the 2029 national elections, every party’s approach will be premised on whether the GNU is popular. If the May election told us anything, it was that voters want change. The reason there is a GNU is that Zuma took 14.5% of the national vote, not because the constitutionalist parties swayed the public. They didn’t.
2026 campaign
Municipal performance will be the first test. Politicians will determine how to position themselves. They will listen to the word on the ground. Do people credit the GNU with real change, or can it be discredited as what Shivambu calls the “government of neocolonial unity”?
Both Shivambu and Zuma are talented organisers, with networks into traditional leaders, churches, trade unions, youth and women’s groups, ex-combatants, the SACP and other elements of the “congress movement”.
Public statements from the SACP and the trade unions since the GNU was established are more consistent with the MK party’s position than with Luthuli House. For those who have nothing, it takes little imagination to see that narrative take on.
The non-legacy media that worked so well for Trump will be running hot from Shivambu’s shop. Influential media figures like the popular podcast of Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, and eNCA’s Prof JJ Tabane, don’t dwell on the constitutional dangers or the market collapse that the MK party or EFF could bring.
The ANC will obviously fight a hard campaign in 2026. But both the Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal ANC organisations — the two biggest provincial battlegrounds — are hampered by internal instability.
Luthuli House has threatened to dissolve both provincial executive committees, but delayed a decision to December, in part because of a fundamental conflict between Luthuli House and the Gauteng provincial executive committee over the GNU.
In these conditions, it’s not impossible to imagine them controlling Durban (eThekwini), and they are aiming for Ekurhuleni in Gauteng. The MK party won 45% of KwaZulu-Natal in May after a rushed start, so 50% in 2029 is not unrealistic.
GOING UNDERGROUND
Zuma is plotting to get back. He choreographs the defection of members of the other parties, and both the EFF and ANC admit they don’t know whose next. Only the sphinx of Nkandla knows. He is building momentum towards 2026, then 2029. Last week he announced 400 IFP members joined the MK party, soon after the EFF’s former chairperson, Dali Mpofu, joined too. He is targeting the supporters of three established parties.
At his last public appearance he said he would be going “underground” until he had something new to say. He’s working hard to get there. First prize is a reverse takeover of the ANC.
That’s why he is fighting expulsion from the ANC despite leading an opposing political party against it. Outsiders imagine no more serious betrayal of one’s party, but his goal is to peel off more ANC and EFF members until he looks formidable, at which point others will fold. The quality of too many ANC officials isn’t high enough or principled enough to resist, according to the ANC leadership itself. The possibility of patronage in 40 local councils, the budget of eThekwini, and even the KwaZulu-Natal provincial administration will be powerful impetus.
His narrative is that he has never left the ANC. He still stands for ANC principles. The ANC left him. It’s well-trodden route. Ronald Reagan said that when he left the Democratic Party half a century ago.
The EFF’s weakening position was highlighted when Zille announced that the DA’s black membership had overtaken the EFF’s. If this continues, Julius Malema will be forced to make the big decision — does he go in or be marginalised?
A reverse takeover of the ANC is not impossible. If the ANC is looking weak ahead of elections, members of the ANC national executive committee could swing behind the argument that the GNU failed, but radical economic transformation will bring us Heaven. The result could be catastrophe.
The MK party hit 14.5% within six months of formation, and 45% of KwaZulu-Natal. It’s not hard to imagine it combining with the EFF, scraping off a few more ANC leaders, and taking control of KwaZulu-Natal.
Rapid growth
Only rapid growth can save the GNU. Ramaphosa has started using that term. To cut into the pool of unemployed, the economy needs to get above 3%, but none of the GNU forecasts predict that, and there is no ready plan to achieve it.
The National Development Plan (NDP), now 12 years old, targeted rapid growth and job creation. It missed all its targets by a country mile. It targeted high growth and got no growth, rapid narrowing of unemployment and got the opposite.
Why did the NDP fail so spectacularly? And why isn’t the GNU laser focused on that question?
I began researching rapid growth in the 1990s at the University of Chicago, anticipating just such an issue back home after the Mandela moment passed. Japan was doing it, China was next, followed by other Asian economies. Several African countries without minerals or oil have done it.
The NDP failed because it did not set priorities, it was a laundry list. And the political will was never behind it. It had solutions for everything and priorities for nothing. Politicians paid lip service to it and bureaucrats attached NDP targets to old budget items. Nothing changed. That’s not a developmental state, as any developmental economist could tell you.
Each country that got rapid growth analysed its own economic environment meticulously, and came up with plans for the sectors with the most obvious potential. Several African countries did the same thing with spectacular success. Each country’s priorities depend on their economic potential.
Whether they called themselves communist or capitalist, their formula was pretty much the same. It started with a market system, but did not stop there. Ethiopia was the most successful, gleaning the highest growth rate in the world for 10 consecutive years. For it, it started with agriculture.
Once you’ve set sectoral priorities, based on research not ideology, you have to be willing to move budgets and relentlessly demand results. For SA, my work tells me the priority sectors with rapid growth potential are mining, the green economy, the information economy, agriculture and tourism.
Without sacrifice, the effort is not serious. Budgets will have to be moved. Where are the budgets misspent? There are undoubtedly agencies not meeting their mandate, clearly kept alive because influential staff are protected.
So that’s the landscape for the next round. Zuma defeated even the shrewdest strategist on the liberation side, Malema, and looks to defeat him again. But his ultimate target is the ANC itself.
When Shivambu attacks the GNU, he has a second description — a government of neoliberal unity. This will be so catchy among people schooled in liberation jargon. Supporters of the GNU need to have a response.
“Neoliberalism” may not be a phrase that resonates for readers of Business Day, but it resonates among ANC elites. Neoliberalism promotes smaller government, free trade, privatisation. Get the government out of the way.
Those policies can get you into the 3% growth range. To get more, you have to examine the countries that got more, like China, Japan and Ethiopia. Those governments cut waste and support sectors with rapid growth potential. They built the government departments that can do that, and cut the ones that don’t.
The stakes are very high. The GNU has made a good start and given us reason to be hopeful, but the dangers have not evaporated.
If people don’t see visible change in their lives by 2029, it’s not hard to imagine voters voting for the Zuma faction in whatever form it then exists. They may well ignore Zuma’s unsavory history of court cases, damage and destruction, what they call his character flaws, and vote his faction into power.
Why won’t they? Bad character does not stop people being elected. After all, Americans just did that.
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