Internal party pressure can break the Government of National Unity — Roelf Meyer

28 Jan 2025

Former minister in South Africa’s first democratic-era government, Roelf Meyer, has urged leaders to focus on the ‘national interest’ amid ongoing tensions in the power-sharing broad coalition.

Internal pressure within a political party has the power to unravel the Government of National Unity (GNU) — as was the case in 1996 when “hardliners” within the National Party (NP) forced FW De Klerk’s hand in leaving the power-sharing arrangement, says former minister Roelf Meyer, who, with President Cyril Ramaphosa, negotiated the transition from apartheid to democracy.

South Africa’s first democratic-era government in 1994, which included the ANC and Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), worked for a time, and not without its fair share of tension, but died because of “internal pressures within the National Party, primarily”, Meyer told Daily Maverick.

“People within the NP were unhappy with us that were in government, as part of the GNU, and they leveraged pressure on FW De Klerk to withdraw from the GNU.

“And the biggest mistake, of course, in our experience, was that FW De Klerk fell victim to the pressures that were launched from within his own party ranks. It was terrible, with long-term negative consequences,” he said.

According to Meyer, “the pressures will be there” in any power-sharing agreement. The 10-party GNU of today, predictably, suffers from the same internal pinpricks.

Read more: ‘A new ruling order has to be built’ — Roelf Meyer on SA’s power-sharing future

“I think one must accept that you will always have the doves and the hardliners — hardliners who tend to look more at the past, and doves who tend to look more at the future,” said Meyer. The “hardliners” wanted the NP out of the GNU because of their “own predominant interests”, he said.

“And, I would tend to say, the same kind of circumstances play out at the moment again, but in all the parties, or in the main parties. We see it in the ANC, and we see some of that in the DA.”

In the seven months since the GNU was formed, opposition to the power-sharing arrangement within the ANC and in its tripartite alliance has grown. Ramaphosa is under increased pressure in the ANC for working with the DA, as is clear by the public utterances of several of its members.

Read more: Mbalula’s failed attempt to dehorn Lesufi proves ANC’s internal boiler of disagreement still runs hot

I think, one must accept you will always have the doves and the hardliners — hardliners who tend to look more at the past, and doves who tend to look more at the future.

Tensions have continued to emerge in the coalition over sharp differences in policy issues like the Basic Laws Amendment (Bela) Act, the National Health Insurance (NHI), and, most recently, the Expropriation Act.

The DA last week declared a formal “dispute” over the Expropriation Act and the NHI, and called for a “reset” of the GNU’s relationship with the ANC, after Ramaphosa signed the act into law. Both pieces of legislation are steadfastly opposed by the DA’s constituency which poses an existential threat to the party.

DA leader John Steenhuisen made clear the call for a “reset” was not an ultimatum to leave the coalition. But Steenhuisen has made the point that the DA can walk away from the GNU at any time.

Daily Maverick’s Stephen Grootes has suggested that Ramaphosa’s signing of the Expropriation Act before the Cabinet lekgotla on Wednesday, was a strategic application of pressure by Ramaphosa on the DA, and that this “game of pressure and brinkmanship” will continue, for probably the next two years.

Read more: Expropriation Bill: decades in the making, what lies ahead for South Africa?

Meyer says these policy disagreements that have beset the GNU are not problems that “can’t be resolved if people are talking to each other”.

The issues are almost certainly going to be debated at the lekgotla on Wednesday, 29 January 2025. But the talking doesn’t hinge on Cabinet members only, says Meyer, it also depends on the people in “different layers of party structures”.

The “real threat” to the stability of the GNU, in Meyer’s mind, will come from next year’s local government elections, “where parties will compete against each other”, and the ANC elective conference in 2027.

“Those two equations are going to put the GNU under pressure — I have no doubt about that. My advice would be that the parties must keep in mind what is the bigger or national interest that they should work for because clearly, in our case, that was not considered and therefore it fell apart,” Meyer told Daily Maverick.

Dealing with disputes

DA leader John Steenhuisen said the party would “invoke” Clause 19 of the Statement of Intent, the charter by which parties to the GNU operate. The clause provides the need for consensus on issues, stating that sufficient consensus exists when “parties to the GNU representing 60% of seats in the National Assembly agree”.

Read more: GNU tension erupts after Steenhuisen seeks urgent dialogue over Ramaphosa’s signing of Expropriation Bill

The only parties in the GNU that together represent 60% of seats in Parliament are the ANC (40%) and the DA (22%).

The Statement of Intent also provides that “in instances where sufficient consensus is not reached”, parties should raise disputes within the deadlock-breaking mechanisms created for this purpose.

This suggests that the clearing-house mechanism, the issue-specific negotiating committee chaired by deputy president Paul Mashatile to iron out disputes, will now become activated. But the clearing house has yet to adopt terms of reference, and analysts and conflict-management specialists have argued that the mechanism itself is proving ineffectual.

The clearing house had its last meeting in December 2024, where the Bela Act was the centre of the deliberations. Mashatile’s spokesperson Keith Khoza told Daily Maverick this week that there was no set date for the clearing house to meet again at the moment, but the terms of reference would be “tabled for final adoption” in “the future sitting”.

One of the key issues before the clearing house was the Bela Act. But the clearing-house subcommittee was ultimately not able to resolve the dispute by recommending a single solution to the president. Recommendations were provided to the president, but consensus on a single resolution — the mandate given by Ramaphosa — was never achieved.

In a letter to Ramaphosa on 24 January, in which Steenhuisen objected to the Expropriation Act, he raised the issue of there not being any agreed to terms of reference, and claimed the clearing house “mechanism was abused during the dispute over Bela”.

The clearing-house mechanism “should presuppose that leaders at that level should be far more versed — far more skilled — in modern-day conflict management”, said negotiator and conflict and employment dispute specialist Andre Vlok.

“We have a tendency in our politics… to outsource responsibility for our decisions to those mechanisms, and that cannot work,” he said.

“We have such skilled mediators in this country, and they should make use of external people to help them. A GNU should never get to this stage where they need these triggers (like the clearing house).”

Founder and executive chairperson of the Democracy Works Foundation, Professor William Gumede, said it was clear the clearing-house mechanism was not working as it should, because if it was, these “disputes” would have been resolved there before they became public.

Gumede was the independent chairperson and head negotiator of the now defunct Multi-Party Charter.

“In a healthy coalition, the contentious issues are resolved beforehand,” said Gumede. He said that an initial audit should have been done of the contentious policies that parties in the GNU disagreed on before the formation of the coalition. Negotiations should have started on the policies they could find agreement on, according to Gumede, and the more disputed policies then moved to the clearing-house model.

“They should only move out of the clearing house when there’s consensus,” he said. DM

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