South Africa’s Government of National Unity (GNU) marked its 100th day in office at the weekend. Formed after the May polls, the new GNU arrangement of 10 political parties has been hailed as the panacea for the country’s social and economic woes.
However, some detractors have described the GNU as a sell-out pact only meant to serve the interest of business at the expense of the poor. This is despite President Cyril Ramaphosa sentiments that the GNU is ” the best thing that we now have to move the country forward.”
“Any other option as far as I am concerned will really be bad for this country at this point in time,” the President had said. However, political economist Duma Gqubule paints a bleak future for a pact Ramaphosa described as an exceptional achievement.
“I pray that this thing collapses you know. I hope it collapses and we can begin to think about what change will look like. The prospects are not good for South Africans, especially the youth because my focus is unemployment. After 100 days, they have never said anything about how they going to address this unemployment crisis. Nothing from the Central Bank and nothing from the Treasury but they are just planning to tighten the screws of these failed micro-economies. So what they going to do in the budget in 2025 is to introduce a primary surplus target of two per cent and inflation target of 4.5 per cent which will make the economic crises worse.”
Gqubule further argues that one cannot do the same thing repeatedly and expect different results.
“They have just repeated the same economic policies that have failed over the past 15 years with different people… this is the ANC government, it feels like an ANC government. They are doing the same thing and the results will be the same as they were over the last 15 years. According to my modelling, the number of unemployed people is going to increase by two million to 14.4 million by the end of this administration… at the same time unemployment will increase by 44.6%.”
There will be more testing moments for the GNU – Duma Gqubule weighs in
Professor Ntsikelelo Breakfast has also weighed in saying it is still early days to say whether the GNU has done the job.
“It’s still early days to see where the wind is blowing, but the discourse about the conception of GNU was framed by the ruling party to circumvent critics that it has joined forces with the DA. So instead of employing the concept of a coalition formation, they have opted for the notion of GNU. They can argue and say they have joined forces with other political parties as opposed to one political party but at the moment I cannot single out political indicators which are showcasing that all is well.”
Breakfast also says while there seem to be celebrations for the GNU, the pact has a lot to overcome.
“I don’t want to be excited and say that all is well at the moment, just because there is some kind of stability. We know that there are some contentious issues one of them is the issue of NHI. The other one that we don’t often talk about is our foreign policy posture. ”
While some are skeptical about the prospects of the GNU, investors are cautiously optimistic but wary of the risks ahead. On the other hand, the markets have given the new pact the benefit of the doubt for now, but political pundits warn that any instability in this grand coalition could quickly reverse the gains.
Source: eNCA
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