There will be little left of SA should the governing ANC win the upcoming provincial and national elections in 2024, DA leader John Steenhuisen said Wednesday.
“I think it will be disastrous for the country, I think by the time the next election rolls by in 2029, there will be very little left,” Steenhuisen told Business Day on the sidelines of the two-day opposition national convention aimed at dislodging the ANC from power.
“The ANC has put us on a trajectory towards a failed state, our economy is shrinking, our people are preyed upon by violent criminals every day, [there is] massive unemployment, [persistent] load-shedding, [and] failed state-owned entities [SEOs].”
He said if the ANC is given another five years, the “social and economic fabric” of SA will not hold. “That’s why this [upcoming] election is a hinge-of-history moment and people need to get onboard now, because we may not have a chance later down the line.”
Leaders of the DA, IFP, Independent South African National Civic Organisation (Isanco), Freedom Front Plus (FF+), ActionSA, United Independent Movement (UIM) and the Spectrum National Party (SNP) are discussing the values and principles that will guide a pact government, rules of engagement during the election campaign, and formulas to form cabinets after the 2024 election.
The discussions at Emperor’s Palace in Kempton Park are closed to the media. They come at a time when several surveys, including one by the ANC itself, indicate that the governing party’s electoral support could fall below 50% in 2024.
The ANC has put us on a trajectory towards a failed state.
— John Steenhuisen, DA leader
Buoyed by these polls, opposition parties are gearing for closer co-operation should the ANC fail to get a majority.
Steenhuisen said the opposition parties that formed the “moonshot pact” were not particularly worried about the absence of the second-largest opposition party, the EFF, and other smaller parties.
He said there was no point being in government with a party that doesn’t share your values and principles.
“Part of the reason there is such policy incoherence is SA currently and why our economy is stagnating and why nothing works in government is because you have three different ideologies in the tripartite alliance [of the ANC, Cosatu, and SACP] all pulling in different directions. You need to have solid bases of values and principles, [a] common programme of action to be able to have that coherence in government.
“It doesn’t matter who the face of this thing is, we will discuss [that] over the next two days. We have made it very [clear] that if we are going to have a presidential candidate, it must be somebody who is going to maximise the votes.”
“This is not a DA-for-president [project], this is about how we put SA first and how we start to build the alternative in the country. I think we should deal with the values and principles and programme of action and get to the personalities later, but this is certainly not a situation where individuals now are selected to be the presidential candidate.”
He called on other political parties not yet part of this “credible path to victory” process to join them.
A historic moment
Briefing the media on Wednesday afternoon, independent chair Prof William Gumede said it was quite important that the parties had agreed on a multiparty charter for SA. The discussions, he said, were “very robust, very frank, open [and] we are making progress”.
Gumede described the convention as a historic moment for SA, as it was one of the few processes in the world “where a pact or coalition agreement is negotiated before an election”.
“The very first thing we are trying to do is to try [to] bring parties together in agreement. It’s extraordinary, because this sort of thing happens after an election. It’s a very exciting process,” Gumede said.
He called on the political parties to rise above “petty squabbles” and take decisions in the best interest of SA, which is dogged by high levels of unemployment, deepening poverty, violent crime, systemic corruption and persistent load-shedding dampening economic growth.
“It’s all these realities that bring ActionSA into these conversations — to put our differences aside. We need to attract more parties to build a broad church ... there is no ambiguity about the removal of the ANC [from power],” ActionSA president Herman Mashaba said.
SNP president Christopher Claassen said the convention was a critical moment that will change SA’s political future. “We look forward to finding common ground ... and replace the generally corrupt party [called] the ANC,” Claassen said.
FF+ president Pieter Groenewald said it was not a rare phenomenon that a nation would at one point approach a crossroads.
He said 1994 was a historic moment. “Our next crossroads or historical moment is 2024 [and] it won’t be the last one,” Groenewald said.
He said no-one would object to the argument that SA was not in a good trajectory and the “only way we can save SA is if we get rid of the ANC government. There is no other way. We will do everything we can to unseat the ANC government,” he said.
mkentanel@businesslive.co.za
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