Cyril Ramaphosa has completely changed the ANC. The broad church has gone. The class project is over. He has freed the ANC to become a middle class, pro-business party of all races.
Election 2024 has completely changed the electoral and political landscape. Every sensible poll put the ANC somewhere between 39% and 42% – a bloodbath, in short. The ANC was characteristically mum about its internal polling, but must have seen what was coming. On the day, the ANC polled 40.18% of the vote.
It is reasonable to assume that President Cyril Ramaphosa and his allies, with foresight of what was coming, made their own prior political calculations. The Government of National Unity (GNU) did not fall from the sky. Nor, crucially, did its make-up of parties.
Since the formation of the GNU, much has been written about its functionality, how disputes will be resolved, and speculation about how soon it will die. The basic assumption is that the GNU was a last-ditch attempt by the ANC to stay in power as the dominant party in a coalition of smaller parties (all of whom lost the election, lest we forget).
This may be correct. However, it gives Ramaphosa and his camp no credit at all: the GNU is pitched as an act of desperation, rather than part of a broader calculus, which is suggested here.
Predictable lines
The 2024 election was proceeding along predictable lines until Jacob Zuma launched uMkhonto Wesizwe party (MK). No doubt this was considered a masterstroke that would “reclaim” the ANC from Ramaphosa, just as it cheekily “claimed” the name MK as its own. MK offered an aggressive stance on issues such as land restitution, the role of traditional leaders, hostility to whites, dislike for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights – and “the ANC of Ramaphosa”.
At a stroke, ANC voters and members who were unhappy with “Ramaphosa’s ANC”, and with a hankering for the days of impunity and sleaze, had an alternative to their liking and left the ANC in droves.
But the calculation failed: a substantial ANC rump remained with Ramaphosa, and were seemingly immune to the allure of MK (how true this is will only become apparent over time).
And in that moment, Ramaphosa made his most important intervention to date. Ramaphosa, who only won the ANC presidency with a clutch of votes, had been hemmed in by endlessly repeated calls for “unity” – which was ANC code for not pursuing ANC cadres accused of corruption, incitement and the rest.
Ramaphosa in 2024 seems to have decided to break the ANC. Daring his opponents and critics, many of whom occupied important positions in the government, Ramaphosa used the election result to create a coalition that was market friendly, delivery focused, and gambled on economic growth as its salvation.
He allowed his most vocal critic, the DA, historic foes such as the IFP, conservative white parties such as the Freedom Front Plus (FF+), tiny newbies such as Rise Mzansi, and others to join the GNU.
It is important to acknowledge agency here – the GNU could as easily comprise the ANC, EFF and MK. Choices were made.
Gambling on the ANC’s electoral future
Ramaphosa was also gambling on the ANC’s electoral future. After plunging 18% between national elections, and having dropped below the 50% mark in the last local election (and with new local elections looming), the ANC was, and is, facing decimation.
“More of the same” – ironically echoed in the weak ANC campaign slogan “Let’s do more… together” – was, and is, untenable. Only one option existed: to break with the past.
The EFF and MK had taken up lodging in Africanist, quasi-socialist, gloomily retrogressive terrain. So Ramaphosa turned the opposite way and sought to unite working people – and obviously the middle classes of all races – behind a GNU that focused on growing the economy, delivery, and respect for governance.
The impunity that ANC leaders enjoyed for three decades was over, as the GNU brings with it immediate accountability. It is a massive gamble: but it is the only chance the ANC has of saving (some of) its blushes come the 2026 local elections.
Read more: South Africa: A new chapter being written?
The result was predictable. The EFF and MK had simply assumed that they would be the preferred partners in the GNU. They approached negotiations in an arrogant, lackadaisical fashion, with the presumption that the ANC needed and wanted them.
The tone became notably more shrill as the GNU appeared to be slipping past them. Non-racialism was tossed out of the window, as their spokespeople glowered about not working with “white parties”. Removing the DA and FF+ was a predictable precondition for their joining.
Their supporters argued that all three – the ANC, EFF and MK – were from the “Congress tradition” and were natural allies, while “white capitalist” parties were anathema. Little ideological argumentation was offered: “more of the same” is precisely what they wanted.
Ramaphosa and his ANC simply slid past them into a new world. He chose a centrist, certainly capitalist, market-friendly path.
The school-yard socialism of the EFF and the inchoate messaging of MK were rejected. And they were rejected again in the provinces where a unity government was required. The humiliation was complete. He has thrown down the gauntlet to all those who hanker after the old days and the old ways. Politics has been changed profoundly.
Apostasy
The ANC prided itself on being a broad church, both in exile and after 1990. It has long been criticised by academics and activists on the left for being too bourgeois, and by others for being too left-wing.
Aside from formal alliances with the South African Communist Party and Congress of Trade Unions, the ANC has included members and officials that cover the full spectrum of views, from arch-capitalist to ultra-left. That includes people of high principle, and those with no moral compass whatsoever.
Smuts Ngonyama famously said: “I did not join the Struggle to be poor.” However, many clearly did join the ANC in order to become extremely wealthy, by any means necessary. All were accommodated in the “broad church”.
After Ramaphosa won the ANC presidency with a handful of votes, ANC messaging was all about “unity” – which became a euphemism for not pursuing those identified by the State Capture commission; or participating in the 2021 insurrection; or the Covid-19 looting, and on and on. They all remained blessed within the broad church.
Ramaphosa’s government deadlocked as factions fought it out within the ANC, limiting his options. The ANC itself was the site of struggle – not South Africa.
It is ironic that MK gave Ramaphosa the chance to break free of the shackles that Zuma’s allies in the ANC had used to hamstring his first term, as well as the historical baggage the broad church had gathered over decades.
The reckoning
Ramaphosa will almost certainly pay a price for this, particularly for allying with the DA and FF+. This has been characterised by EFF and MK spokespeople as “a return to apartheid”, showing just how thin the skein of non-racialism is in South Africa.
Ramaphosa cleverly put land affairs under the leadership of the only MP of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), the original Africanist party that split from the ANC in 1959 – distinctly not in “white” hands. Nonetheless, race matters in South Africa, and will be used by Ramaphosa’s opponents as they seek some kind of reckoning.
No president has ever finished two full terms in office in democratic South Africa. Ramaphosa will almost certainly maintain the trend, voluntarily or otherwise.
But he has completely changed the ANC. The broad church has gone. The class project is over. He has freed the ANC to become a middle class, pro-business party of all races – exactly what left-wing critics predicted.
Read more: GNU is the name, unity is the game — President Ramaphosa focuses on a ‘cooperation nation’
His gamble is twofold: firstly, that an ideologically coherent ANC that delivers, without many of those tainted by corruption, is more electable than the old ANC. That is his only hope for the local elections given the collapse of governance in the local sphere.
Secondly, that a centrist coalition focusing on delivery will see the markets respond, the economy grow, and he can begin to meet the huge challenge of unemployment – the overwhelming priority in every poll. It is a remarkable step.
Ramaphosa himself seems rejuvenated, and the smiling face of the early “New Dawn” years has returned. Lekgotlas are no longer dour all-ANC affairs; rather (in Ramaphosa’s words), the recent gathering saw “great synergy”.
“Change” was the most common word used throughout the election. Overwhelmingly, it was used to mean “change away from the ANC”. In an extraordinary twist, Ramaphosa has become the engine of change. DM
David Everatt is a Professor at the Wits School of Governance.
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