Take VAT! GNU comes unstuck as fiscal fracas plays out in National Assembly

It all seemed to come apart over the course of four short hours beneath the Nieuwmeester Dome. That was all it took for the delicate facade of the Government of National Unity (GNU) to shatter. By the time the votes for and against the Budget’s fiscal framework were tallied and announced, the ANC was singing in jubilation — and the DA looked more politically isolated than maybe ever before.

That it would be an afternoon of high-running emotion was clear from the outset.

“We are calling on your conscience to say you cannot lead an unlawful process,” MK MP Mzwanele Manyi told Speaker Thoko Didiza in trademark courtroom-dramatics style, imploring her to halt proceedings.

Similar pleas, and legal threats, were issued by the DA and the EFF — claiming that the chaotic marathon session of Parliament’s finance committee the previous day was procedurally irregular and its decisions unlawful.

How discomfiting it must have been for the DA to find itself squarely in the same camp as the EFF and MK on this issue: a union nobody voted for and everybody will deny tomorrow. It would later lead Tourism Minister Patricia de Lille, who seemed to be having more fun than she’d had in years, to term the three a “doomsday coalition”, in a jab at a phrase coined by the DA before the elections last year to describe a potential ANC-EFF-MK coalition.

Didiza, unfazed, citing what was presumably her legal team’s hastily drafted memo, declared that the show would go on: “There is no legal impediment preventing this House today proceeding with its business.”

There may not have been a legal impediment, but EFF and MK MPs did their best to create other obstacles. The terrible acoustics of the Nieuwmeester Dome, Parliament’s home until its fire damage is adequately repaired, were advanced as further reason why the session could not proceed.

EFF MP Leigh-Ann Mathys said she was being distracted by something “squeaky”. This was, in fact, an inaccurate description of the auditory distraction in question, which did exist but sounded more like the incessant chiming of sleigh bells on the perimeter of the room, as if Father Christmas was perpetually rounding the corner with a sack of presents.

“MK MPs are not sound engineers,” said an MK MP in the course of a back-and-forth exchange about the noise issue.

“They are very far from being engineers,” came the ANC heckle — slightly unkind, given that MK MP Brian Molefe, the State Capture-era CEO of Eskom, has an honorary doctorate in engineering from Scotland’s fifth-largest university.

Sports Minister Gayton McKenzie grabbed the microphone and bellowed into it with such earsplitting force that not a single word was intelligible. He seemed to be cheering on the Speaker. Or calling for the instant deportation of foreign nationals, who can say?

Read more: The Budget brouhaha and you — wallet pressure, service strain and the price of political paralysis

The Farce Report

Finance Committee Chair Joe Maswanganyi was eventually permitted to take the podium to defend the fiscal framework as the “result of an extensive process”. He commended ActionSA’s efforts in tabling a proposal that the VAT hike be scrapped — and then promptly seemed to undermine that by urging Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana to “mitigate the impact” of the looming VAT hike.

All political parties bar the ANC voiced some degree of unhappiness or concern about the fiscal framework thereafter — including parties which said they would vote for it nonetheless, like Rise Mzansi and Build One South Africa, arguing that a delay would be worse.

But the real fireworks came from the DA’s finance spokesperson, Mark Burke, who delivered a scorching monologue that could double as a breakup letter to the GNU.

“A farcical day for a farcical process leading to a farcical report,” was Burke’s dismissal of the committee proceedings on Tuesday, 1 April.

He eviscerated ActionSA and the IFP for siding with the ANC, accusing ActionSA of “selling out its voters for five minutes of media coverage” and dismissed their VAT recommendations as “flimsy, pointless” gestures destined for the same fate as most of the Zondo Commission findings: the recycling bin.

Burke’s coup de grâce was reserved for the ANC: “They don’t want coalition partners, they want supplicants,” he practically spat, while ANC MPs maturely heckled him with cries of “Goodbye!”

ActionSA’s Athol Trollip, in turn, insisted his party had led the protection of South Africans against tax hikes, despite there appearing to exist zero legal mechanisms to enforce their recommendations that VAT not be increased and income tax rates be adjusted for inflation.

Read more: Budget deadlock — is ActionSA the ANC’s saviour and what does it mean for the GNU?

Then came McKenzie, the GNU’s resident wildcard, who admitted he’d spent yesterday pleading, “We can’t lose the DA!”

Today? “Abahambe.” (Translation: “Let them leave” — which also happens to be McKenzie’s catchphrase with regard to migrants.)

A less subtle message was handed down to the DA by Godongwana as the final speaker before the vote: “I don’t think you can vote against the Budget and tomorrow you want to be part of the implementation.”

Final score: Democracy 0, Drama 1,000,000

But that’s what the DA (and a number of smaller parties) did. MPs were called upon to vote individually by voice — and the DA Cabinet ministers voting against the fiscal framework were treated to special hisses of disapproval from the ANC.

The voting was tight, a reminder of how difficult it is going to be for the ANC to get much done in Parliament if they are to enter a scenario where they cannot count on the votes of any of the three other largest parties.

But the “yes” votes carried the day. ANC MPs broke out into celebratory ululations which seemed laced with a certain relief that they no longer had to pretend to be nice to the DA. MK MPs adjusted their indoor sunglasses, and DA MPs alternately exchanged fake laughs and practised their thousand-yard stares.

The DA’s Mat Cuthbert probably summed it up best: “Good luck explaining this to your voters.”

He meant it as a zinger targeting ActionSA — but it could just as well apply to pretty much everyone in the room. DM