French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once mused: “If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.”
This thought is useful to interrogate the recent flurry of announcements from President Cyril Ramaphosa.
A win?
Start with the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act (BELA) “win” of mid-December 2024. On the day of the announcement that the Act was to be implemented voetstoots, shorn of any negotiated compromises, I happened to attend a lunch hosted by a major financial institution in Cape Town. Guests included some of the serious financial players who power our economy, both local and from overseas.
What was striking was the huge appreciation expressed for the existence of the government of national unity (GNU). It mattered little, based on some casual conversations there, the intricacies or compromises in the new government, or even the achievements (or lack of them) in the six months of its existence. What really counted for these folk, an accurate barometer of general business sentiment, was that it was the DA which was in the new arrangement, and not, for them and the economy, the far worse alternative, the EFF and MK.
This glimpse into the soul of the economic weather makers suggested one reason why it’s difficult for the DA to exit the government. Many would be appalled if the DA departure meant the entrance into office of those determined to blow up the economy and reduce to smithereens the accumulated wealth gathered around the lunch tables, and elsewhere across the country.
Later that afternoon, with the announcement that BELA would be implemented when Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube (DA) had promulgated norms and standards, the DA suggested this to be a “win win” even though it had previously declared the offending sections of the legislation were “a thick red line” for the party. Now apparently written in invisible ink.
Cheers for the announcement, though, were loudest from the very faction in the ANC most resolutely opposed to the GNU itself and the outpost of resistance to Ramaphosa himself. Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi and his gang are the leaders of the resistance.
Though with his announcement, ironically, Ramaphosa has strengthened their hand and weakened his own. Indeed, in the run-up to the ANC National General Council meeting in June 2025 – a dress rehearsal event for the main drama of its elective conference in 2027 – the intensity of noise against the current GNU and the DA’s continuance in it will intensify.
Stability needed
There are few internal ANC votes apparently for praising the signature achievement of Ramaphosa of 2024, namely the current coalition.
This suggests a few things, none of them reassuring. First, Ramaphosa’s continuance as president of the country is contingent on the stability of current arrangements. Outside the ANC, only the DA has the numbers in Parliament to ensure easy passage of legislation, including the budget. An arrangement with the MK and EFF would provide similar political stability but at the risk of extreme economic destruction, as the guests at the business lunch in December attested.
Second, the DA made it plain that only a government led by Ramaphosa, and not one of his populist or corrupt internal opponents (and they often intersect) would ensure its continued participation in the GNU. Yet the groupings outside the door of the current GNU, hammering it down to gain their own admission to it, are the most implacable opponents of Ramaphosa himself.
Worth remembering here that no ANC president has ever completed two full terms of state office. Only Mandela, who wisely stood down after just one term, escaped the party axe. This then suggests the most inexplicable – and third – conundrum, why does Ramaphosa propitiate his enemies and provoke his allies?
In his January 8 statement, outlining the ANC agenda for the year ahead, it was full speed ahead, arm the torpedoes and ram the national democratic revolution on the fragile economic landscape. Just an aside of relevance to the fiscal health of the country: while Bela attracted opposition due to its removal of parental choice and school autonomy and language use, less attention was given to the dire financial strait jacket it imposed on an overburdened National Treasury.
Magical thinking
The mandatory introduction of Grade R across the board will, according to a provincial education minister, cost at least R18 billion for infrastructure and teachers and excludes costs of transport and nutrition. And quite where the seriously underperforming education department is meant to magic up new introductory teachers for around 1 million Grade R pupils is not explained. Magical thinking indeed.
But economic prudence and sustainability are last on the list of government priorities. Thus, Ramaphosa’s assurance that the gargantuan National Health Insurance (NHI) is proceeding “whether you like it or not” and the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition has just announced a new R100 billion fund to finance black-owned business, to be funded by a tax of 3% on after-tax profits on all business entities.
A very noteworthy article was published last week in the Daily Friend by journalist Ivo Vegter, who underlined that, “Remaining an under-developed country is a choice.” And that is the path chosen by the ANC and Ramaphosa.
As Vegter explained: “We can send Cyril’s vacuous grins to global jamborees to go a-begging from rich countries all we like. Maybe we’ll get thrown a few dollars. But this will just disappear into the black hole that is South Africa’s under-developed, wealth-destroying economy. It will be like pissing on a veld fire. It won’t make any difference.”
His contention is the economic dire straits we are in are precisely because we ignored the option and trade-offs needed for a high growth and employment-rich economy. The road we have chosen (or rather the government has chosen for us) is – far more than our awful past – responsible for the fact that the “country isn’t growing today, more than 30 years later” (since the ANC commenced governing).
In none of Ramaphosa’s announcements is there the slightest hint that he and government will reverse course on polices that have not only failed but which go a long way to explain the dark economic hole we are in.
Mathew Syed, a British journalist and author explains the psychological strategy to avoid admitting mistakes in his book Black box thinking – a meditation on why politicians plough on with policies even when they are not working.
Ramaphosa is exhibit A of this tendency locally. But what of his prop in government, the DA? On his next global jamboree, to the World Economic Forum later this month in Davos, Ramaphosa will be accompanied by a plane load of Cabinet ministers, including DA members. Along with his “vacuous smile”, they will be showcased on the Swiss Alps as proof that South Africa overseas can demonstrate its multiparty governing credentials. Even if the views, policies and principles of the same partner are resolutely ignored at home.
In the apartheid era, the National Party used to showcase to foreign visitors a coterie of Bantustan politicians as proof positive that its internal policies had black support. That ended badly.
Not the hill to die on
The DA is hardly in the position of erstwhile Bantustan leaders. Their sense of both self-respect and self-preservation is greater. But at a point sooner rather than later, for example, in the looming budget, it’s going to have to assert itself. BELA might not have been the hill to die on, but NHI is certainly, to mix metaphors, a bridge too far.
There is a fascinating new study on political leadership by Tony Blair, the only British Labour leader to ever win three consecutive general elections in the 125-year history of that party. His huge majorities in parliament did not prevent him from seeing the wisdom of compromise in negotiating.
And here his book On Leadership offers a sharp reminder for those in South Africa’s current government, where no party has an outright majority, who need to compromise or watch the admired GNU blow itself up.
Blair writes: “Ultimately, the best negotiations are always those which leave the other side with a sense of achievement. Both sides happy is the best outcome. Anything that looks like a big victory for you at the expense of the other will be a pyrrhic victory, leaving a bad taste in the mouth of the other, for which you will pay in the future.”
Ideal airplane reading for the GNU members on the flight to Davos.