ActionSA: GNU gets F for failure to deliver

Mail & Guardian

18-06-2025

ActionSA has delivered a damning evaluation of the GNU. (@PresidencyZA/X)
ActionSA has delivered a damning evaluation of South Africa's government of national unity (GNU), awarding it a series of failing grades and criticising it for operating in a leadership vacuum.
The opposition political party on Tuesday released its '
The scorecard analysed and rated the coalition's performance across six critical themes including ethical leadership and public service; the economy; infrastructure; basic services; education and crime. A reflects an excellent performance, B good performance, C average performance, D poor performance, E minimal effort and F complete failure.
ActionSA national chairperson Michael Beaumont said the party had developed the tracker 'because the government, whose role it is to set the agenda and set the strategy of our country, has been silent on what our national KPIs [key performance indicators] are.'
'We didn't come here just to criticise. We've committed ourselves to be a constructive opposition. But when you do an honest assessment and you listen to the first-hand experience of these members of parliament, our government really hasn't done well,' Beaumont said.
'Not one of the new ministers and their plethora of deputy ministers have signed a performance agreement,' he said, detailing excessive government spending and criticising the size of the 'bloated cabinet'.
'The ANC refused to give up one seat and wanted to accommodate more people. Just that increase cost South African taxpayers R1.5 billion a year,' Trollip said.
An ActionSA-led government would implement a lean, effective cabinet of no more than 20 ministers with all deputy minister positions abolished and ministerial perks 'drastically curtailed', he said.
'Ministers are public servants, not royalty, and must live as such … We have seen excessive travel extrapolated for the first year — close to R400 million of international travel. Ministers and our deputy president can spend between R250 000 and R350 000 a night in a hotel. That is completely unacceptable and doesn't reflect ethical leadership at all,' he said.
'Leadership is actually about being an example and … there's sadly a dearth of examples in leadership in this country. In fact, what we see every day is self-service and self-influence, which is not reflective of leadership.
'The only way to gain the public trust is to be transparent, and taxpayers want to know where their money is going, and unemployed, poor South Africans want to know why they can't get services, because they live a hand-to-mouth existence.'
He said Ramaphosa was not acting against corruption and the
Criminally charged people, such as
'There's supposed to be a war against corruption in this country. Nobody's seen one shot fired. The blame must be laid at the door of the NPA and the National Director of Public Prosecutions, because we see them lose case after case,' he said.
ActionSA MP Alan Beasley painted a grim picture of unemployment and the economy, awarding the government an 'F' grade.
'In South Africa, we have 8.3 million people unemployed. There are a further 3.5 million workers who have been discouraged who have given up looking for work. So, there are nearly 12 million South Africans that are unemployed — 12 million South Africans that are being psychologically murdered because of unemployment,' he said.
'Under the GNU, it is getting worse. Unemployment is increasing … which under the GNU, has ticked up from 42.6% to 43.1% and, in the last quarter alone, 300 000 jobs were lost,' Beasley said.
Economic growth forecasts had consistently declined, from 1.9% to potentially less than 1%, he added.
Another MP, Malebo Kobe, analysed trade and transport challenges for which the government got a D because there are 'green shoots' of improvement but highlighted widespread problems with the country's infrastructure and transport sectors.
According to the latest World Bank global container port performance index, the Port of Durban had dropped from position 369 to 393 in the world, while Cape Town had fallen to 401 under the GNU.
Kobe added that South Africa was supposed to be a leader on the continent, yet ports like Berbera in Somalia ranked near the top 100, which was a missed opportunity.
'It is that we're not maximising our ports and our coastal communities are also paying the price for this,' she said, criticising Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure Dean Macpherson for unfulfilled promises.
'When the minister came in, he came in with the promise of creating a construction site for South Africa. But, in fact, what we are seeing is that, since he has come in, there's been a loss, in fact, of 103 000 jobs in the construction industry,' she said.
MP Tebogo Letlape highlighted
He said an important function of basic service delivery was access to proper sanitation, which was a basic human right and a cornerstone of public health and dignity.
'Just here in Slovo Park, you go to the corner of Slovo Drive and Freedom Way, and the sewage is leaking. And I can assure you right now that the
He also highlighted the failure of a system where people who break the law get prioritised by the government.
'How are you going to have proper sanitation when you are allowing people to live anywhere they wish and they would then be empowered by the judiciary to have rights?
'So, you have this system where if you break the law, you jump the queue, you build a house in a riverbed, and suddenly you have to be prioritised in terms of housing ahead of all the others that have been waiting for two generations,' he said.
He added that hospitals were overfull as they were having to cater for foreigners as well as citizens, and that municipal services such as electricity, are unaffordable for many.
'Electricity has improved but it's still not reliable. Not only is it not reliable, but it's also unaffordable. Now, when your input cost for energy is so high, how can you build an economy? How can you run your hospitals? How can you run transport?'
The
She said the high school dropout rate was alarming as only 53.6% of students who start grade 10 complete matric, a number that had dropped from 55.3% in 2024.
'Our education system, colleagues, is a true, true tragedy,' Ngobeni said.
She also highlighted significant challenges with the National Student Financial Aid Scheme, with the numbers of youth not in employment, education or training rising to 45.1%.
South Africa's
'I can, this morning, give you names of lives that were lost in my community in Eldorado Park over the weekend. Three children below the age of 18 shot and killed, brutally. It's a daily occurrence in all our communities,' James said.
The systemic failures extended beyond statistics, with critical infrastructure challenges hampering law enforcement.
'I cannot find anything good about 30 detectives having to sit in one office, sharing four cellphones. I cannot find anything good about one vehicle having to serve a community where bodies are being carried out on a daily basis,' James said.
She mentioned specific cases to highlight the depth of the crisis, including murder incidents involving child victims such as 11-year-old Jayden-Lee Meek and 14-year-old Chanel Plaatjies, where repeat offenders were arrested, but subsequently aided by a broken justice system.
'Who is keeping this government to account? Who is enabling the crimes within our communities?' James asked.
Beaumont said it was not enough for the coalition government to exist merely to ensure that Zuma's uMkhonto weSizwe party and Julius Malema's Economic Freedom Fighters were kept out of government, something DA leader John Steenhuisen has admitted was a motive for his party joining.
'It is not enough for the next five years to tell South Africa that we should be appreciative of what we've avoided. South Africans expect the GNU must govern, and it must deliver services, and it must deliver the changes that were promised during the election campaign,' Beaumont said.
'What you really have is a government that is running in multiple directions all at once and in no direction enough.'