The ANC has crossed a line for many of its supporters with its right-wing coalition with the DA, dressed up as a government of national unity (GNU). The party could disappear within the next five years.
I started hearing that the coalition was “a done deal” long before the ANC said it would try to form a GNU. Knowing that many of its supporters believe the DA represents white interests and hates the things black people support — including BEE employment equity, labour laws and minimum wages — the ANC had to call for a GNU as a cloak to cover up its plan. The reality is that any arrangement that involved the DA voting for austerity budgets would in effect be a right-wing coalition.
I predicted this outcome almost three years ago, writing on this page that President Cyril Ramaphosa “would appoint his deputy, John Steenhuisen, to head a panel to revive state-owned enterprises and privatise Eskom and Transnet”. After Ramaphosa’s 2019 state of the nation address I also wrote a column that correctly predicted that the number of unemployed people would increase to 12-million from 10-million by the end of his first term. The ANC-DA doomsday coalition will be a disaster for the economy and entrench the failed neoliberal policies of the past three decades.
In a recent interview on Newzroom Afrika, former public protector Thuli Madonsela said a World Bank official had told her at a conference in Kenya that SA has the most right-wing Treasury in the world. SA’s economy grew by a miserable 1.2% a year during the past 15 years and public investment collapsed by 24% since 2009 owing to insane austerity policies. What logic is there in cutting public investment when it has such high multipliers and can create the resources to more than pay for itself?
The ANC-DA doomsday coalition will be a disaster for the economy and entrench the failed neoliberal policies of the past three decades.
In 2023 SA’s GDP per capita was lower than it was in 2007. As the Treasury continues to suffocate the economy to implement an arbitrary fiscal rule that the DA will support, there will be five more years of declining GDP per capita during Ramaphosa’s second term. By 2028, GDP per capita will be lower than it was in 2007. With an annual GDP growth rate of 1.2%, the number of unemployed people will increase by 2.5-million to 14.6-million. The unemployment rate will soar to 45.2% from 41.9%.
As the economy continues to collapse and the government backtracks on transformation with a DA minister of trade, industry & competition and supporters desert it owing to its “sell-out” to the enemy, the ANC will become a 30% party at the 2026 local government elections. But the party will tell us Ramaphosa is popular and not recall him after four consecutive electoral disasters — in 2019, 2021, 2024 and 2026.
The ANC’s conservative elites, who are always in the minority and find ways to circumvent the will of its members, will push for a merger with the DA at its 2027 national conference. The new party will scrape through and win the 2029 election with another right-wing coalition.
It will rinse and repeat the same policies. SA faces a dystopian future over the next decade under a right-wing coalition and will be an economic wasteland by the 2034 election. With annual GDP growth of 1.2% a year, GDP per capita in 2033 will be lower than it was in 2007. The number of unemployed people will soar to 20.8-million by the end of the right-wing coalition’s second term. The unemployment rate will increase to 51.3%.
South Africans must look to the UK after 14 years of disastrous Tory rule and realise that austerity is technically incapable of growing the economy and creating jobs. At some point we must say voetsek to these failed economic policies or else an MK-led coalition will take over.
• Gqubule is research associate at the Social Policy Initiative. He writes in his personal capacity.
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