South African Democracy at 30: Election Leads to Formation of a Government of National Unity

What does the formation of a Government of National Unity tell us about South Africa after 30 years of democracy?

South Africa staged its first democratic general election in 1994, with Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) emerging the winner with a substantial majority of the vote, as it did in four successive elections. However, when South Africans went to the polls in April 2024, the ANC lost its majority for the first time, compelling President Cyril Ramaphosa to negotiate the formation of a Government of National Unity (GNU) with some nine other parties. What does this tell us about South Africa after 30 years of democracy?

Time Called on the ANC in 2024

An initial conclusion is that South Africans are running out of patience with the ANC yet are not convinced that any of the alternatives on offer would do any better. Nonetheless, they sense that like any government which has been in power for an extended time, the ANC is running out of steam and ideas.

During its early years in power, under Presidents Mandela (1994-99) and Thabo Mbeki (1999-2008), South Africa experienced modest but constant economic growth, providing for the steady expansion of the basics of life—education, water, and electricity among others—to the mass of South Africans who had been denied them under apartheid. Under his successor, Jacob Zuma (2009-2018), growth and progress stalled. In part, this was because a commodity boom had ended and, like numerous other countries, the South African economy was badly hit by the financial crisis of 2008-09. To be sure, the Zuma administration hugely compounded the nation’s woe by a series of own goals.

The ANC has always boasted of being a “broad church” incorporating a wide variety of liberals, socialists, and communists, yet under Zuma, genuine policy differences descended into factionalism and internal party fighting as opportunism trumped principle. This culminated in an era of “state capture” whereby Zuma presided over a period of extensive plunder of the state, as both state-owned enterprises (supplying electricity, running roads, railways, harbours, and an airline) and government departments were systematically looted.

Ultimately, this all got too much, even for the ANC, and an internal revolt (sparked by Zuma’s blatant attempt to “capture” the Treasury, a key ministry which had fought back against corruption) brought Ramaphosa to power in early 2018. Popular for the key role he had played in negotiation of the country’s democratic constitution before 1994, he had served as Zuma’s deputy president since 2013, yet had somehow maintained his reputation as “Mr Clean,” which he refurbished by promising South Africans a “new dawn.” More popular than his party, he led the ANC to an unexpectedly convincing victory in the 2019 election, when despite numerous discontents, it still won 57 percent of the popular vote.

Fast-forward to 2024. Opinion polls had warned the ANC that it was in danger of losing its majority. Nonetheless, it was stunned when the results came in, leaving it with just 40 percent of the poll. Despite presiding over this disaster, Ramaphosa’s presidency was never imperiled. He has many enemies, hangovers from the Zuma period, within the ANC. Nonetheless, he remains popular, and in any case, there is no obvious successor to replace him. Furthermore, although often accused of indecisiveness, he has been given credit for his attempts to implement reforms—removing structural impediments to growth, repairing the damage done to the state enterprises, and cleaning up corruption—in the face of much internal opposition within the ANC. He was now charged with forming a coalition capable of governing the country for the next five years.

Formation of the Government of National Unity

Following the election, Ramaphosa engaged in the difficult process of forming a coalition government. This was always going to revolve around an axis of the ANC and the leading opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), which won 21 percent of the vote. Having won half as much of the vote as its rival, the DA initially argued for half as many seats in the GNU as the ANC itself. However, there was much resistance within the ANC to any idea of coalescing with the DA—a descendant of the liberal parliamentary opposition under apartheid—which is regularly depicted as a party which serves primarily “white” and racial minorities’ interests. Consequently, if he was going to make a deal with the DA, Ramaphosa had to move carefully.

He did this by encouraging the formation of as wide a coalition of opposition parties as possible (there is a total of 18 parties in the recently elected National Assembly) and arguing that they would all need to be accommodated with seats in the new government. Ultimately, the DA had to settle for less than it wanted, with six out of the 32 posts in the cabinet, and some seven deputy ministries, with other positions dished out to other parties which had demanded their ounce of flesh.

The jury is yet out on whether the GNU will live up to its billing as a new start for South Africa’s democracy. The problems are many. There will be the difficulties which beset any government composed of rivals. Will they prove able and willing to work with each other? Will ANC-run and DA-run ministries be able to work with each other, or will they clash over priorities and policies? The DA has long complained that the ANC has stuffed the public service with its “cadres,” elevating loyalty to the party over merit and efficiency. Will high level bureaucrats collaborate with their DA political bosses? And what will be the implications for the formation of the GNU in South Africa’s nine provinces and multiple local governments, which are responsible for implementing national government policy, yet enjoy considerable autonomy in practice?

A major reason why the ANC lost its majority was that Zuma threw his weight behind the formation of a new party, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), which took its name from the ANC’s armed wing during apartheid. It came from nowhere to take over 14 percent of the popular vote and become South Africa’s third largest party. MK is infused by Zuma’s personal enmity to Ramaphosa and was never going to be invited to join the GNU.

These goings-on at the national level had complicated reverberations at provincial levels, most notably in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, the country’s two most significant provinces economically. In Gauteng, where the ANC had only barely scraped home in the provincial election in 2019, it was compelled to end a coalition with the black populist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), but refusing to ally with the DA, it opted to work as a minority government, an outcome which looks unstable. Meanwhile, in KwaZulu-Natal, previously ruled by the ANC, MK swept up to 45 percent of the vote to become by far the largest party provincially, and threatened mayhem if it was kept out of power.

The ANC responded by forming a coalition with the DA and smaller parties to retain control over the province. Yet having a majority of only two (41 to 39) in the provincial legislature, its rule looks fragile in a province where political rivalries between parties have often played out with deadly violence.

Prospects for South Africa under the GNU

South Africans have broadly welcomed the formation of the GNU while remaining sceptical of whether it can tackle South Africa’s deeply entrenched problems of poverty, inequality, and unemployment. Living standards for ordinary people improved slowly but surely from 1994 until around 2008, but have largely stalled thereafter. Although the ANC has fostered the rise of a black middle class, South Africa is regularly classified as the most unequal country in the world. Meanwhile, unemployment remains at a staggering 30-35 percent of the working age population, with prospects of employment for young black South Africans, many of whom are dismally educated, particularly grim. Yet the South African economy seems locked into a seemingly perpetual cycle of low growth and low hope.

Before the election there had been fear in many quarters that if the ANC received a vote as low as it did it would form a coalition with the EFF. The DA had labelled this a “doomsday coalition,” expressing the views of many within the business community that if it took power, investment would pour out of South Africa, precipitating an acute financial crisis.

By choosing to form the GNU, constructed around an axis of the ANC and DA, Ramaphosa has sought to allay the concerns of “the markets.” The message he is sending out is that the structural reforms to the economy he embarked upon during his first term will pick up pace during his second presidency. They may well do so. But whether they will provide for the sustained higher level of growth which is necessary to make serious inroads into South Africa’s major challenges depends on the GNU working together harmoniously. Whether it will do so remains to be seen.

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