ANC's failures fuelling DA's anti-transformation agenda

IOL News

11-05-2025

Democratic Alliance (DA) Federal Council Chairperson Helen Zille at a media briefing on May 5, 2025 in Johannesburg. The persistent bickering between the ANC and DA is to be expected. The GNU is, after all, a marriage of inconvenience, says the writer.
Prof. Sipho Seepe
THE DA's decision to challenge the Employment Equity Amendment Act has the ANC fuming.
In a strongly worded statement, the ANC accused the DA of 'drifting from the spirit of the Government of National Unity and positioning themselves outside the project of nation-building and shared prosperity. Transformation, equity, and diversity are not up for negotiation."
This legal challenge follows closely on the DA and EFF's successful bid to stop the Treasury from increasing VAT by 0.5 percent. These challenges, including the DA's intention to challenge the implementation of the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act and the National Health Insurance Act, are part of a strategy to wear the ANC out by keeping it busy.
The persistent bickering between the ANC and DA is to be expected. The GNU is, after all, a marriage of inconvenience. Neither party has ever expressed love for the other. The GNU has all the hallmarks of a marriage on the rocks. This includes a lack of trust, public display of disrespect and contempt for each other, and lack of commitment. Both parties have tried to argue that the GNU was born out of necessity.
Having lost 22% of the vote share in six years, the ANC came into the marriage as a mortally wounded partner. President Cyril Ramaphosa has since tried to spin this reality by arguing that the voters 'through their votes, determined that the leaders of our country should set aside their political differences and come together to overcome the severe challenges that confront our nation.'
The DA has not fallen for this nonsense. Helen Zille, the Federal Chair of the DA, could not have been blunter. She averred. 'We are not in the GNU to please the ANC or anyone else.'
The GNU has been the best gift for the DA.
It has the upper hand. It can influence government policy and still assume its role as the major opposition party. It has nothing to lose. The ANC has become synonymous with failure. Any success of the GNU will be attributed to the presence of the DA. The DA went into this arranged marriage with two publicly stated intentions.
The first is to present itself as a viable alternative to the ANC. The second is to finish what is left of the ANC. There is no better time for Helen Zille to fulfil her promise in 2019 to oversee the death of the ANC.
The DA can count on the ANC's identified weaknesses. Fewer individuals can speak with authority on the ANC's leadership challenges than Dr Mavuso Msimang, who (in)famously stated: "It's a pity that the ANC has a person like Mbalula as its secretary general. It is an embarrassment. For an organisation party that once boasted the likes of Sol Plaatjie, Oliver Tambo, Duma Nokwe, and a few others, to end up with Mbalula is a commentary on the state of the organisation. How did we elect a person like this to that position?"
The problems extend to the Office of the President. With the Phala Phala scandal hovering over his head, Ramaphosa has become a highly compromised leader. No less a figure than the former Chief Justice Raymond Zondo has reportedly argued that Ramaphosa should have resigned following an exposé of the Phala Phala. Given that Phala Phala has all the signs of fraud, corruption, money laundering, kidnapping, and torture, Ramaphosa's refusal to resign has weakened the fight against corruption and criminality.
Internationally, Ramaphosa's attempts to portray himself as a crusader against corruption hit the skids.
The ANC's fall from glory was long in the making.
Delivering his political report in 1997 on the occasion of the ANC's 50th National Conference, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela argued that 'a cursory study of the positions adopted by the mainly white parties is the national legislature during the last three years, the National Party, the Democratic Party, and the Freedom Front will show that they and the media which represents the same social base have been most vigorous in their opposition, whenever legislative and executive measures have been introduced, seeking the end the racial disparities which continue to characterise our society.'
Viewed from this historical lens, there is nothing new about parties such as the DA in opposing legislative and executive measures meant to redress the past. Mandela should have known better, as Sizwe Sikamusi so eloquently put it. 'White people would never voluntarily dismantle the system that privileges them…it's just logic…No system has ever collapsed because its beneficiaries felt guilty. Systems collapse when they're challenged, disrupted, and replaced.'
Perhaps more chilling, however, is Mandela's foresight. He noted that 'the defenders of apartheid privilege continue to sustain a conviction that an opportunity will emerge in future, when they can activate this counter-insurgency machinery, to impose an agenda on South African society which would limit the possibilities of the democratic order to such an extent that it would not be able to create a society of equality, that would be rid of the legacy of apartheid.'
It is a sad commentary that after 31 years in office, the ANC government has left the apartheid architecture intact. The socioeconomic material conditions of Africans, bar a few, have worsened. What Mandela could not have foreseen was that his party would find common cause with the very party that he once accused as a party of white bosses and black stooges. Unbeknown to him, the ANC would metamorphose into a party of black stooges whose only purpose is to seek accommodations in spaces of white privilege.
As they say, there are no accidents in politics.
* Professor Sipho P. Seepe is an Higher Education & Strategy Consultant.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.