Letter to Mahlamba Ndlopfu: GNU

Daily Maverick

02-05-2025

Ah, Chief Dwasaho! My leader, you who once walked with the Lord, preaching fire and brimstone at dusty crossroads across Mzansi, or so your biographer would have us believe, must surely recall the scripture, 'Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning' (Psalm 30:5).
Let us not forget the post-election hustle. Between 2 June 2024, when the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) announced the final results of the national and provincial elections, and 14 June 2024, when the National Assembly convened and reluctantly re-elected you as tenant-in-chief at Mahlamba Ndlopfu.
And the joy? It did not cometh in the morning. It came, almost sheepishly, in the late afternoon of 14 June, wrapped in last-minute haggling and reluctant applause. It would take you, Comrade Leadership, 288 hours or 12 sleepless nights of backroom dealmaking, sharp elbows from Democratic Alliance (DA) don Helen Zille and frantic shuttling between boardrooms. All to cobble together a government stitched with chewing gum and faith but no clear mandate from the people – the 2nd Government of National Unity (GNU).
Cynics may ask: what unity?
Nine months into this much-fancied GNU, there has been no joy. Only the unrelenting weeping and gnashing of teeth for the 'leader of society', the African National Congress (ANC).
Unity for whom
Since you announced your all-inclusive Cabinet on 30 June 2024, it has been 306 days of looking at your back, 306 nights of weeping in silence, and 7,344 hours of watching this so-called voluntary GNU unravel like a poorly stitched funeral suit.
Unlike the first GNU in 1994, helmed by President Nelson Mandela and anchored in the authority of a negotiated interim Constitution, yours was not born of a national imperative but of political expedience, a patched-together survival political strategy masquerading as unity.
Unity for whom? The political upper class divided the cake among themselves. For the people? Not even crumbs – so far, No Value Added, I repeat.
Yet, my leader, it must be said that you emerged from your office at the Union Buildings, perched atop Pretoria, like a boss to announce your new Cabinet, beaming from ear to ear. And once the announcement was made, oh boy, the markets did backflips.
The bond market exhaled and the stock market jumped. Currency traders clicked 'buy.' Investors loosened their collars. Philanthropists, old colonisers and private sector economists clinked glasses. Even those who had never heard of South Africa – like that former American landlord-in-chief, Donald Trump, who once thought it a direction rather than a nation – briefly turned their heads.
Take credit, my leader, for compounding the critics' narrative that Africa (shithole, side-eye Trump) is a continent incapable of stable democratic governance, especially when liberation movements lose their grip on power or, at the very least, their parliamentary majority. Yet, South Africa, even at 30 years of democracy, five years shy of leaving its virgin territory, defied expectations. Not a single shot was fired; the army remained in the barracks, and those betting on civil unrest lost their wagers and had to eat their words, humble pie and nails.
Some bondholders, both local and foreign, rejoiced at your return. After all, when someone owes you, it's always comforting to see them loitering near the till – grinning and looking vaguely creditworthy. There's an old joke that when you have life cover worth millions, the news of your death reaches the financial markets before your family.
Analysts described the new Cabinet as a 'business-friendly' outcome because it included the DA – a longtime friend of big business and Monopoly Capital, despite its lacklustre 20% electoral performance – and you retained Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana.
Investors, bondholders, and currency traders even overlooked the appointment of Mzwanele Nyhontso, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) member now serving as minister of land reform and rural development. Conveniently, they developed collective amnesia regarding the PAC Struggle slogan: 'One settler, one bullet.' That bullet was dodged in favour of investor confidence and policy certainty.
They also ignored Gayton McKenzie, the new minister of sport, arts and culture, a proud former gangster and bank robber with a flair for noise pollution and foot-in-mouth disease. The man is more obsessed with chasing undocumented foreigners than nurturing the next Akani Simbine, our 100m sprinting sensation who has consistently broken the sub-10-second barrier.
Under his watchful eye, McKenzie's department sent someone to the Venezuela International Book Fair who had never penned even a letter to the editor. Apparently, she went as an aspiring author. Meanwhile, my three solo books and contributions to five more titles do not qualify me. But I digress.
I am left pondering which is more disconcerting: the historical chant ' one settler, one bullet ' or the Afrikaner-manufactured controversy, led by AfriForum over the ANC's liberation-era slogan, ' kill the Boer, the farmer '.
GNU to nowhere
It has been 306 days today since the GNU Cabinet announcement and a two-minute honeymoon period fizzled out – and still, the GNU has offered: No Value Added. It's just noise and endless political theatrics.
On 9 February 2025 – for the first time since 1994 – the Budget speech was shelved at the 11th hour. The second one presented on 12 March went the way of the dodo days later. Finance Minister Godongwana, wearer of many hats and mumbler-in-chief of the fiscus, now whispers of a third-time-lucky presentation on 21 May. These delays have spooked the markets.
All this stop-start theatre is a political mechanisation by the DA to reset the 'coalition' agreement with the ANC and reposition themselves as the 'Messiah' of the poor. Hence, the manufactured urgency over the VAT Act's constitutionality, despite being in operation since 1991. They went gung-ho over the passing of the 2025 Budget's fiscal framework without their support and a modest 0.5 percentage point increase over two years to plug a R75-billion hole.
For a party allegedly pro-business, its frivolous litigation, pyrrhic no VAT victory, and court-ordered Budget framework vote restart can hardly inspire investors' confidence. They don't have the numbers to go it alone. Now, if every decision (employment equity law being the latest casualty) made by the GNU Cabinet or prior administration is susceptible to litigation, that doesn't bode well for the markets, which are already rattled by Uncle Sam's mood swings.
Furthermore, the blanket claim that VAT is inherently evil and hurts the poor most is cute, sure, but total poppycock. What really hurts the poor is not VAT. It's the cost of servicing government debt, mostly borrowed to feed a consumption machine, not build schools, hospitals or working rail lines.
South Africa has a debt crisis, plain and simple. In 2025-26, 22% of total Budget expenditure will go to paying interest on past debt. In short, we've maxed out the national credit card. Growth is sluggish, and personal income tax (PIT) is tapped out, yet revenue must be raised. No VAT increase means a real austerity budget – not the cosmetic belt-tightening we've seen in the past decade.
According to Professor Imraan Valodia from Wits University, VAT isn't 'regressive'; it's a consumption tax. It hits only income that is spent. If you're below the PIT threshold, VAT is how you contribute – fairly – to public goods. We already know the vast majority don't pay for government services, so VAT becomes the easiest and most efficient way to collect billions.
Meanwhile, the middle class and the rich pay both PIT and VAT. And because they spend more, they pay more at the tills. That's not regressive. That's arithmetic.
In April this year, I asked my leader: Will the GNU Cabinet adopt the snail's pace of Moses of biblical times, who led the Israelites out of slavery from Egypt to the Promised Land over 40 years, a journey that takes 10 to 15 days on foot? Or will it wander in a bureaucratic desert, each with its version of the Promised Land?
And the answer? The GNU trajectory is clearly stuck in Biblical Moses's time by design, not omission.
All of you have squandered 306 days, yet there is no Budget or economic policy, and you are just all wandering in a bureaucratic desert. Sadly, not even the much-fancied National Dialogue to craft a collective vision for SA Incorporated has materialised. Unfortunately for you, my leader, the weeping at night persists, but the morning glory is but a rumour.