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Zuma, MK vs SABC on GNU — When will the courts decide enough is enough?

Zuma, MK vs SABC on GNU — When will the courts decide enough is enough?
Justine Limpitlaw
By Justine Limpitlaw
22 Jul 2024
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It’s tempting to ignore the MK party’s legal attempt to stop the SABC from using the term Government of National Unity as a political stunt, but when the official opposition makes threats that seek to undermine the independence of the public broadcaster we need to take heed.

Jacob Zuma and his uMkhonto Wesizwe (MK) Party have launched urgent legal proceedings in the high court against the SABC, its board chair and CEO for using the term Government of National Unity or GNU when reporting on the government of the day.

According to the founding affidavit signed by Zuma, the use of the term Government of National Unity or GNU constitutes “deliberate and intentional imparting of inaccurate information by … the SABC” and/or “the advocacy of hatred that is based on race” (at paragraph 69). 

This is la-la land territory and it is wild. It’s tempting to ignore it as a political stunt aimed at generating conversation, but when the official opposition makes threats that seek to undermine the independence of the public broadcaster we need to take heed.

Often the crux paragraphs of the affidavit literally make no sense. For example, in paragraph 60, Zuma says that “the current arrangements do not fit the definition of a government of national term”.

Does he mean government of national unity? In paragraph 60.1 he says that the term “is used to describe a situation where the vast majority of elected parties representing approximately 85% to 90% of the electorate” and there the sub-paragraph simply ends, leaving readers hanging, grasping for the actual point of it. 



He also states at paragraph 60.2 that the term “is used to describe a situation where the nation in question has undergone a catastrophic or calamitous event calling for a united effort across the usual dividing lines”.

He cites a number of apparently credible sources (but includes Wikipedia at paragraph 62), to argue that the phrase Government of National Unity is subject to “technical or scientific definitions” and that the current governmental arrangement being practised in South Africa “does not fit the definitional elements of a GNU” (paragraph 63), as if GNU is a term of art with an immutable, science-based meaning which requires a calamitous event – rendering numerous cobbled-together democratic governments where no single party has secured an outright majority that exist in many countries not governments of national unity. 

He goes further, saying, ludicrously, that the public broadcaster using the term Government of National Unity or GNU is an example of Nazi-esque propaganda in which “a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its points on” (at paragraph 66).

Seriously? Get its “points on”? Does he mean “pants on”? And he then uses the analogy literally by pointing to the fact that US President Joe Biden sent congratulatory messages to South Africa commending political parties “for working together to form a Government of National Unity” (at paragraph 67), as if Biden were studiously watching the SABC to get his wording just so and in doing so haplessly helped to make the “lie” of the GNU the truth.

Apparently, the SABC’s use of the term Government of National Unity or GNU has caused Zuma “immeasurable harm” to him “as a citizen”, to MK as a political party, “which plays no role in the current arrangement for various political reasons”, and to the “public at large” (at paragraph 68).

However, exactly what the “immeasurable harm” actually is, is never specified – a pretty fatal flaw for urgent proceedings in our high court if precedent is anything to go by.

Freedom of expression


In the SABC CEO’s terse written response to Zuma’s urgent demand to cease and desist from referring to the government as the Government of National Unity (Annexure MK8 to the founding affidavit), Nomsa Chabeli correctly asserts the SABC’s right to freedom of expression.

Acidly (and correctly) she points out that Zuma’s cease-and-desist demand is not only meritless, but irregular, in that the process he ought to have followed involved lodging a complaint with the SABC to be resolved in accordance with its editorial dispute resolution mechanisms, and if he was not satisfied with the outcome, to approach the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of the South Africa (BCCSA) for a ruling.

I agree, and think the high court is likely to take a dim view of an obviously editorial matter being brought directly to it for adjudication when the statutory regime for the sector requires complaints to be made to the BCCSA.

Zuma’s despair


So what is really going on here? Ultimately, the founding affidavit appears to be a foot-stamping exercise. Zuma is cross with the public broadcaster and the whole document is a wail of impotent despair; a cri de coeur of “what about me?” because, it appears, a Government of National Unity cannot be such if it does not include him and his party.

And Zuma’s affidavit is, unsurprisingly, coy on the reasons for the MK party’s exclusion from the GNU. The bottom line is that Zuma has placed his party in the position it now finds itself.

As has been extensively covered in the press, all political parties were invited to be part of the GNU. And the tellingly vague statement in paragraph 68 of Zuma’s founding affidavit that the MK party “plays no role in the current arrangement for various political reasons”, belies the truth of what happened, namely, that MK plays no role in the GNU because it refused to be part of it.

It seems that Zuma is affronted that his demands on the nomenclature issue are not being obeyed. We can only surmise that he is furious that his particular view on the nature of the GNU is not being given credence, and the term is rattled off verbatim by the public broadcaster.

Indeed, he specifically states that despite being made aware of his view on the matter – expressed in paragraph 41 of his founding affidavit as “there is no Government of National Unity in South Africa. There is a white-led unholy alliance between the DA and the ANC of Ramaphosa” – the SABC “continued and insisted on not correcting its inaccurate language”.

Read more: Zuma slams GNU as ‘white-led unholy alliance’ as MK party decides to join Progressive Caucus

It is surely devastating to his case, however, that Zuma has been unable to persuade the actual parliamentary leader of the MK party, disgraced impeached former judge John Hlophe, not to keep referring to the Government of National Unity, as, well, the Government of National Unity, as journalist Lester Kiewit has repeatedly and hilariously pointed out on X.



Frankly, it is pathetic. And it would be laughable if it was not also so dangerous.

Abusing court processes


The SABC’s CEO identifies the danger when she says, in her response to his cease-and-desist correspondence, that she and the SABC view Zuma’s demands as “undue political pressure, and interference with the SABC’s editorial independence”.

She is, of course, spot on. And here Zuma is in comfortable and familiar territory. He relished the days when his then Minister of Communications would ensure the permanent appointment as COO of the SABC of his pal and fixer Hlaudi Motsoeneng “because uBaba (Zuma) uyamthanda (likes him)”.

When Zuma was President and Motsoeneng ran the show in Auckland Park, the SABC wasn’t a public broadcaster or even a state broadcaster, it was a factional tool used in factional battles within the ANC. It took numerous high court judgments, including in cases brought by Media Monitoring Africa among others, to oust Motsoeneng and to reassert the principles of the importance of the independence of the public broadcaster.

Zuma’s current case will be dismissed with costs, I am sure. But it does raise an issue that has been troubling judicial watchers for some time. At what point does the South African judiciary say, “Enough”?

Jacob Zuma and his party have litigated their way through the courts (up, down and back up again,) mostly losing. The right of access to the courts is enshrined in our Bill of Rights, but no right is absolute. Surely there comes a point when the institution of obviously baseless cases crosses the line into abusing court processes?

When is our government going to turn to the Vexatious Proceedings Act and use section 2(1)(a) thereof to require Zuma to get the leave of the courts to institute legal proceedings to ensure that only those with a prima facie basis can proceed? It’s high time we ventilate that question in the public domain. DM

Justine Limpitlaw is an electronic communications law consultant and an honorary professor at the LINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand. She writes this on behalf of Media Monitoring Africa.

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