GNU has achieved less than 2% of its goals — Mulder

Freedom Front Plus (FF+) leader Dr Corné Mulder has said that the Government of National Unity (GNU) has been informed that it has only achieved 2% of its goals since the formation of the coalition last year.

This was revealed during a Newsday interview with Mulder, where he said he had attended a gathering where the Speaker of the National Assembly, Thoko Didiza, spoke about the governing coalition’s progress.

“She said that if we are honest, the GNU has not achieved 2% of the goals set a year ago,” Mulder said. “This basically means that the GNU has been a failure.”

The outcome of the 2024 National and Provincial Elections, which saw the African National Congress (ANC) lose its majority support for the first time in the country’s democratic history, necessitated a coalition for governance.

As a result, the ANC, DA, PA, IFP, FF+, GOOD, Rise Mzansi, PAC, UDM, and Al Jama-ah formed the GNU, which occupies 287 of the 400 seats in the National Assembly.

The ANC, which received 40% of the vote, and the DA, which received 22%, hold 85% of the seats of the coalition bloc.

Mulder argues that the GNU failed to achieve its goals due to the coalition parties’ lack of policy coherence.

“When the GNU started, there were huge expectations amongst the public and internationally that at last, there was an opportunity to steer South Africa in the right direction,” Mulder said.

“That did not happen. One of the reasons for this is that the declaration of intent was not negotiated around a table by the parties that are now members of the coalition.”

Instead, the FF+ leader says that the document, meant to outline the coalition parties’ shared goals and principles, was negotiated bilaterally between the DA and the ANC.

He says that once the two parties had concluded the document’s negotiations, the other eight parties were presented with it.

“They said, ‘Can you live with this document and be a part of it?’ It was not negotiated between the ten parties,” Mulder added.

As a result, he says there is very little cohesion between parties, and therefore, between the country’s 32 ministries.

“The Minister of Land Affairs is from the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC). He is pushing a PAC agenda. The DA are using their portfolios to push their own agenda,” Mulder said.

“No collective coherent public policy platform has been pushed forward in that sense. I think we’ve missed several opportunities. We could have taken South Africa much further.”

International relations exclusive to the ANC

In addition to parties going about their own agendas, Mulder says that the ANC exclusively controls specific portfolios, such as international relations.

“It seems the DA agreed in those internal negotiations at the beginning that the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) would remain the exclusive domain of the ANC,” he said.

“In other words, if you see a statement from DIRCO or the Minister of International Relations saying South Africa condemns this or that, it’s not South Africa that condemns it, it’s the ANC that represents 40% of the South Africans who voted.”

The FF+ leader argues that this is also true for economic policies, having previously asked President Cyril Ramaphosa in Parliament about policy reforms being developed within the GNU to create jobs and grow the economy.

He said he received “an economics 101 lesson from the President when he told me that they are going to double down on Black Economic Empowerment and affirmative action.”

The GNU anchored in ANC policy

In a statement released Tuesday, Cyril Ramaphosa’s party confirmed its dominant role in the governing coalition by stating that the GNU “is anchored in ANC-led policies.”

It added that it “remains the central and stabilising force” in the ten-party coalition.

The GNU has highlighted that its main strategic objectives include promoting inclusive growth and job creation, reducing poverty and addressing the high cost of living, and developing a capable, ethical, and developmental state.

Ramaphosa’s party has argued that this is reflective of its policies, with priorities rooted in the National Development Plan and programmes “including the Presidential Employment Stimulus, SRD Grant, expanded school nutrition schemes, and energy reforms.”

However, many have criticised the controlling nature of the ANC in the governing coalition.

Political economist Moeletsi Mbeki has called it “the ANC in drag” for maintaining the status quo of past ANC administrations.

He argues that the party has “alienated the urban African working class and rural poor” by prioritising the African middle class through BEE, preferential procurement, a bloated public sector, and employment equity.

In the same interview with Newsday, Mulder criticised Ramaphosa’s approach to running the GNU.

He said that instead of engaging with the rest of the coalition’s leaders on equal footing, the President has assumed an authoritative role.

Mulder argues that this is evident because the GNU leaders have only met twice since he was appointed leader in February this year, while the cabinet meets two to four times a month.