NEWS ANALYSIS: Ramaphosa stresses unity as GNU tensions surface in Sona reply

President Cyril Ramaphosa asserted unity within the government of national unity (GNU) in his reply to the state of the nation address debate.

He warned parties in the GNU that collective effort is paramount.

Ramaphosa spoke plainly about executive authority.

“In [the] cabinet, there are no parties,” he said. “There are no ANC or DA or IFP or PA or UDM or GOOD or FF Plus or PAC or Al Jama-ah ministries.”

He warned that no minister or deputy minister should claim their work in the GNU as an achievement of their party, stressing that the medium-term development plan binds the executive to collective responsibility.

The president grounded his argument in a traditional understanding of cabinet government: once appointed, ministers exercise authority as part of a single constitutional executive. They do not act as partisan delegates. ANC leaders reinforced that position.

International relations minister Ronald Lamola told the DA it “needs to decide whether it is in government or it is in opposition. You cannot be both.” He argued that several initiatives now cited as GNU gains began under “the ANC sixth administration” and rejected what he characterised as selective credit-taking.

Constitutional tensions

But in doing so, he brought the coalition’s underlying ideological and constitutional tensions into sharper focus.

The DA responded immediately. Within minutes, party leader John Steenhuisen released a statement rejecting the president’s defence of the empowerment policy.

“We reject the protection of BEE, which has benefited only politically connected elites at the expense of the poor,” he said. “We will relentlessly pursue the replacement of BEE with [a] policy that truly focuses on addressing poverty.”

The DA insisted it “will not back down from the fight to replace BEE” and pointed to its Economic Inclusion for All Bill.

Steenhuisen acknowledged progress under the GNU, citing “encouraging signs of stabilisation”, improved economic fundamentals and renewed investor confidence. He attributed those gains to “co-operation, reform pressure and the injection of competence into government”. But he drew a firm distinction: “Stability is not the same as prosperity,” and “the gains are slow and are not felt evenly”.

Read: EDITORIAL | Sona: We have our diagnosis, now we need action

The DA rejected the idea that participation requires policy alignment.

“Participation in the GNU does not mean passive support,” the statement says. “It means driving reform from within.” The party called for an end to cadre deployment and the enforcing of merit-based appointments. It also called for the acceleration of energy market reform and the unbundling of Eskom, as well as the introduction of “accelerated private concessions” in ports and rail.

On empowerment, it remained unequivocal: BEE “must be replaced by an alternative that addresses poverty, not race”.

The disagreement over BEE captures the broader divide.

Ramaphosa told parliament, “Now is not the time to abandon BEE. Now is the time to make it more effective.”

Lamola added that “the GNU does not mean the burial of BEE”.

The DA’s position is that BEE itself entrenches exclusion. The dispute is not about tone; it concerns the architecture of economic transformation.

The tension extends beyond policy into competing theories of executive power. The ANC treats the cabinet as a single constitutional authority.

Ministers, once sworn in, act under the president and must uphold collective discipline. Publicly branding achievements along party lines, from this perspective, weakens executive coherence.

The DA approaches the GNU as a negotiated coalition among parties that secured distinct mandates in 2024. In that view, ministers carry those mandates into the cabinet and must visibly advance them. Differentiation reflects accountability to voters, not disloyalty to the executive. The dispute is therefore institutional, not merely political.

Smaller GNU partners have largely aligned with the president’s collective approach.

The ANC conceives the GNU as a unified executive that demands discipline and shared accountability. The DA conceives it as a coalition that requires visible mandate negotiation and internal reform pressure.

GOOD leader Patricia de Lille argued that the coalition must take “collective credit” for progress and “collective responsibility” for challenges.

Gayton McKenzie said, “We have turned the corner,” presenting gains as coalition-wide. Other partners focused on implementation and stabilisation rather than ideological contest.

In practice, these parties frame the GNU as a pragmatic compact to restore functionality and investor confidence. They accept cabinet collectivity as the price of shared governance. The principal friction line therefore runs between the ANC and the DA.

The ANC conceives the GNU as a unified executive that demands discipline and shared accountability. The DA conceives it as a coalition that requires visible mandate negotiation and internal reform pressure. One stresses cohesion; the other, contestation within partnership.

For now, the coalition continues to function. Reforms in energy, logistics, water governance and public administration proceed.

The DA maintains that the GNU “serves as a bulwark against instability and extremist policy alternatives”. The ANC defends it as a workable model of partnership in a fragmented electorate.

The Sona reply debate made one point clear: the GNU does not rest on ideological harmony, but on the management of disagreement.

Whether that managed tension continues to produce negotiated reform or begins to erode executive coherence will shape the coalition’s durability in the months ahead.