South Africa's GNU turns one – a year of unity, friction and some green shoots

Daily Maverick

19 hours ago

A year into South Africa's Government of National Unity, the country has learnt one thing: duct tape governance may not be elegant, but it can stick things together – at least for a while.
When the Government of National Unity (GNU) was unveiled after the May 2024 election, it was hailed as a political miracle. The rand perked up. Long-term interest rates softened. Investors briefly rediscovered the word 'confidence'.
President Cyril Ramaphosa managed to rebrand a shaky coalition as a 'broad-based unity project', and much of the country ex­­haled in cautious relief. At last, perhaps, we were entering the age of grown-up politics.
Or were we? A year on, the GNU stands – just about. It's held together by mutual dependency, donor discipline and the knowledge that any party pulling the plug would likely be incinerated at the ballot box. Because although South Africans might not unreservedly love the GNU, they fear the alternative more.
In the absence of performance contracts for ministers – a promise now floating in the same graveyard as 'smart cities' – South Africans are left with the GNU's founding statement of intent to judge progress. It was a maximalist document, reading less like a policy framework and more like exactly what it was: a manifesto hastily cooked up in the days of political uncertainty after the ANC's historic loss of its majority vote.
It pledged rapid and inclusive economic growth, a just society, spatial redress, land reform, public service professionalism, corruption-free governance, functional state-owned enterprises, law enforcement that works, parliamentary oversight, social cohesion, nation-building, gender and racial equality, foreign policy driven by human rights, and enough job creation to absorb half a million entrants into the labour ­market annually.
Some have said that it is not fair to judge the GNU after just a year, but it is truly startling how optimistic those aims seem now. In particular, the economy – the domain that looked most likely to reap the GNU rewards – is sending pretty dire messages.
GDP growth is crawling at 0.1% in the first quarter of 2025. Unemployment has worsened, ticking up to 32.9% and the expanded definition hitting a soul-numbing 43.1%. Young South Africans, already the most disillusioned demographic, are experiencing the labour market as a doorless corridor. So much for the job-creating magic.
The GNU brought with it the predictable problem of too much accommodation. Every political spouse, cousin and nephew was handed a Cabinet or deputy post, resulting in a bloated executive that still somehow lacks enough bandwidth to deliver services.
In all the fanfare about new opposition ministers shaking things up, many ANC incumbents were left in peace to do what they do best: disappear. What exactly is happening in Social Development? Small Business Development? Women, Children and People with Disabilities?
Before Higher Education Minister Nobuhle Nkabane went viral for her disdainful chewing performance at a recent Parliament portfolio committee meeting, how many South Africans could even have named her?
Mixed signals in polls
South Africans, for all their justified cynicism, have not yet given up on the GNU. A February-March Brenthurst Foundation survey showed that 57% of voters approve of it. The approval ratings for some ministries, particularly those led by opposition ministers, were sky-high. The Department of Sport, Arts and Culture, under Gayton McKenzie from the PA, scored a whopping 77% approval despite sports writers and arts figures privately praying for divine intervention.
Why does McKenzie score so highly with the public despite being a xenophobic populist who racks up huge travel bills and rewards his cronies at every opportunity? Because he brings a very visible energy and vigour to his portfolio that South Africans clearly crave after years of torpidity from the same tired old ANC cadres shuffled from department to department.
The same Brenthurst poll showed the DA climbing in independent support to 27% (from 22%) and the ANC inching up to 43% (from 40%) in modelled turnout scenarios. MK and the EFF – both vocal GNU critics – lost ground. Clearly, opposition from the outside isn't selling.
But zoom out a little and the cracks begin to show. The Ipsos Governance Barometer, conducted just before the Brenthurst poll, told a slightly different story. Only 42% of respondents thought the GNU parties were cooperating effectively; 50% disagreed. The public romance with the GNU seems conditional. Enthusiasm has waned as tangible gains remain elusive. Fewer than 40% of those whom Ipsos polled believe the GNU will improve their lives.
It's a fragile arrangement, kept upright not by conviction but by consequence. Everyone knows that if the GNU falls, so does the little investor confidence South Africa has left. The DA's donors know it too. The message to its leaders has been blunt: ideology is optional, market stability is not.
At times, the GNU has resembled less a unity government and more a diplomatic hostage negotiation. Opposition ministers, particularly from the DA, were met with hostility from their ANC counterparts and those demoted from Cabinet posts. Leaks and exclusions were common, records Tony Leon in his latest book, with DA ministers not invited to key meetings or consulted on matters in their portfolios, at least initially.
Yet the DA also didn't help itself. Its Cabinet members wasted little time in publicly claiming credit for various successes – some of which, the ANC insisted, were already in motion before the GNU was formed. The ANC, rooted in a collectivist culture, was deeply rankled by the DA's individualist, PR-savvy approach. In the ANC, nobody takes individual credit. (Some would say nobody takes individual blame either.)
The result has been a Cabinet culture clash. In the halls of government, egos rubbed raw against differing political views, and the national project occasionally seemed to be running on spite and gritted teeth. The DA has been in court against the government of which it is part on four separate matters: the National Health Insurance Act, the Expropriation Act, the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act and the VAT increase.
If a coalition government is suing itself in four directions, it is either a sign of healthy institutional checks or a dysfunctional marriage. Possibly both.
Institutional gains … up to a point
There is a lot of hopeful waffle evident in the rhetoric surrounding the co-governance situation. But getting down to the basics, what are the practical achievements of the GNU a year down the line? In a year of limited progress, a few achievements do stand out.
The Department of Home Affairs has cleared a visa backlog that previously strangled tourism and skilled immigration, and in the DA's Leon Schreiber, it has a minister who is clearly working himself to the bone and is a bona fide public policy expert.
The electricity crisis has eased slightly, though most experts attribute this more to households and businesses moving off-grid and South Africa blazing through diesel than to any particular new strategic plan.
But in the all-important energy sec­­tor, there has also been some genuine movement.
Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has finalised long-awaited wheeling regulations, allowing the private sector to legally sell electricity to itself – finally catching up to the economic realities already playing out. He also launched a private sector transmission pilot to get new lines built where they're actually needed.
Speaking of pragmatists, Public Works Minister Dean Macpherson has led a 'sort-of-ish' crackdown on the so-called construction mafia – perhaps not a scorched-earth campaign, but at least an acknowledgment of the criminal realities at play. His department deserves credit, too, for energetically identifying unused public properties to be redeployed for other purposes, such as the shelters for victims of gender-based violence planned for Mpumalanga and Gauteng.
On the logistics front, Operation Vulindlela has made some strides in energy and rail reform, though the road ahead remains long.
Agriculture, meanwhile, is performing minor miracles. The department, under a visibly present and competent minister in John Steenhuisen, has become one of the few from which ordinary citizens (read: farmers) get actual help from the state. Disease outbreaks in red meat and poultry have been met with responsiveness, and the sector is being hailed as one of the few that's keeping the economy upright.
Police Minister Senzo Mchunu has made some missteps, but has seemed to bring a new focus to his ministry, particularly in tackling the country's alarming spate of kidnappings.
There have been welcome de­clines in some crime categories, like murder.
Environment Minister Dion George has been energetic, if sometimes overeager, settling the African penguin case prematurely, but arguably forcing progress. He's shown rare responsiveness to media and citizen concerns, particularly regarding small-scale fishers and derelict harbours.
Finally, Minister of Cooperative Governance Velenkosini Hlabisa has done something no one has managed in years: publish the long-awaited white paper on restructuring mu­­nicipalities. Whether it changes anything is another matter, but it's on paper – so, technically, it exists.
Perhaps most seismically, the GNU-era Parliament has be­gun to resemble a functioning institution.
In what might be its most unfamiliar role to date, it has become a site of real accountability. There have been real questions and real consequences: three Budgets rejected and then passed under proper scrutiny, the Road Accident Fund chief executive suspended, and cadre appointments to the Sector Education and Training Authority boards withdrawn after a public backlash. Long may it last.
The GNU's future
Ramaphosa is expected to exit the political stage by December 2027, when the ANC's next electoral conference is due to be held. His departure threatens to unravel the GNU, if it can survive another 30 months.
The DA entered the GNU because of Ramaphosa's centrist appeal – as Leon's book noted, the DA made it a condition of its membership that Ramaphosa be at the helm. Once he is gone, both the DA and the ANC may lose their appetite for ­compromise.
On the DA's side, Steenhuisen is expected to step down at the DA's 2026 conference. Word is, he'll go quietly in exchange for keeping his ministerial post, assuming it is still available to the DA. (There is a precedent for this: former FF Plus leader Pieter Groenewald stepped down from the helm of his party but retained his post as minister of correctional services.)
The clear DA frontrunner to succeed Steenhuisen is Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis. He already enjoys good relationships with ANC figures like Finance Minister Enoch Gondongwana, and the ANC is likely to view him as less polarising than Steenhuisen.
But trouble for the GNU may lie ahead if Deputy President Paul Mashatile, undisputed strongman of Gauteng, takes the ANC presidency in 2027. Gauteng's ascendancy in the ANC is recent, but decisive. The Eastern Cape is riddled with factionalism and KwaZulu-Natal has been hollowed out by the MK party. The power centre has shifted north, and Mashatile sits firmly atop it.
Whether he becomes the nation's next president in 2029 is another matter. A lot can happen in four years, and in South Africa, it usually does. But a Mashatile-led GNU would be unlikely to peacefully include the DA: of all the ANC leaders, he has been the most outspokenin criticising the DA's lack of cooperation on matters such as the Budget.
Hopes and headaches
The GNU has delivered a fragile stability. It has stemmed some of the bleeding. It has offered voters a break from ideological trench warfare. It has even, on occasion, hinted at what functional coalition politics might look like.
That is not enough, as the economic markers show. This week, Ramaphosa announced a national convention to discuss a National Dialogue: a talkshop moderated by sundry celebrities and former ANC cadres that will encourage South Africans to discuss the state of the nation. The response from citizens seemed to amount to an eyeroll, along with the sentiment that what South Africa really needs is jobs, not more dialogues.
And yet, for all its dysfunction, the GNU has revealed something unexpected: South Africans may not trust politicians, but they still believe in the idea of cooperation. In a country long defined by polarisation, the mere existence of the GNU remains a psychological balm – a reminder that compromise, however begrudging, is possible.
The past year has proved that the political centre can hold, but only just. Whether it can do more than hold – whether it can lead, reform, build – is still in question.
One thing is clear: South Africa cannot afford another year of symbolic unity without structural change. The GNU's second act must be about delivery, not just diplomacy. Otherwise, unity will collapse under the weight of its own emptiness – and take the country with it.
A reminder of what the GNU promised in its statement of intent
Rapid, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, the promotion of fixed capital investment and industrialisation, job creation, transformation, livelihood support, land reform, infrastructure development, structural reforms and transformational change, fiscal sustainability, and the sustainable use of our national resources and endowments. Macroeconomic management must support national development goals in a sustainable manner.
Creating a more just society by tackling poverty, spatial inequalities, food security and the high cost of living, providing a social safety net, improving access to and the quality of, basic services, and protecting workers' rights.
Stabilising local government, effective cooperative governance, the assignment of appropriate responsibilities to different spheres of government and review of the role of traditional leadership in the governance framework.
Investing in people through education, skills development and affordable, quality healthcare.
Building state capacity and creating a professional, merit-based, corruption-free and developmental public service. Restructuring and improving state-owned entities to meet national development goals.
Strengthening law enforcement agencies to address crime, corruption and gender-based violence, and strengthening national security capabilities.
Strengthening the effectiveness of Parliament in respect of its legislative and oversight functions.
Strengthening social cohesion, nation-building and democratic participation, and undertaking programmes against racism, sexism, tribalism and other forms of intolerance.
Foreign policy based on human rights, constitutionalism, the national interest, solidarity and peaceful resolution of conflicts to achieve the African Agenda 2063, South-South, North-South and African cooperation, multilateralism and a just, peaceful and equitable world. DM