MICHAEL MORRIS: GNU partners that disown core agreement will pay a high price - Business Day
Michael Morris
Whatever the outlook for the nascent government of national unity (GNU), what is perhaps not so obvious (or, for that matter, wholly predictable in its effects) is that our politics has changed for good, and none of the partners in it could hope to return to being their old selves.
Remarkably, it is the rhetoric that may well prove decisive. Why that may be is suggested in British historian EP Thompson’s assessment of the dynamics of a very different time — the early 18th-century striving of disparate interests in checking the absolutism of the Stuarts.
In Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act, published in 1975, Thompson notes that “immense efforts were made ... to project the image of a ruling class which was itself subject to the rule of law, and whose legitimacy rested upon the equality and universality of those legal forms”.
This was of significant consequence, as these rulers “were, in serious senses, whether willingly or unwillingly, the prisoners of their own rhetoric; they played the games of power according to rules which suited them, but they could not break those rules or the whole game would be thrown away”.
Of course, nothing is impossible in politics — that is where the art of it lies, after all. But in conditions in which no party has an unassailable electoral mandate to call on, no serious GNU partner could disown the core unambiguous undertakings of last week’s founding statement of intent without risking a punishing cost in credibility.
Who, for instance, could walk away from the following commitments and maintain any claim to being servants of the national interest? “At this historic juncture, we must act to ensure stability and peace, tackling the triple challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality, entrench our constitutional democracy and the rule of law, and to build an SA for all its people.
“The people of SA expect us to work together as political parties to achieve these objectives, and to usher in a new era of peace, justice and prosperity for all.”
Who could discount such “foundational principles” of the GNU as — to pick a few key ones — “non-racialism and non-sexism”; “accountability, transparency and community participation in government”; “evidence-based policy and decision-making”, or “a professional, merit-based, non-partisan, developmental public service that puts people first”, without seeming to be willing on the grounds of some narrow interest to betray the idea that “[the] GNU is constituted in the interest of all South Africans”?
What public interest could possibly be served by abandoning, for example, the very first “basic minimum” priority of “(rapid), inclusive and sustainable economic growth”?
The same would be true of the first of the “Modalities of the government of national unity”. This states with creditable plainness: “Parties will work together in good faith and seek to build consensus on the formation of government where no party has an outright majority, on the basis of the above shared values and minimum programme, and in the interest of all SA’s people.”
Of course, it’s not preordained that any of these fine sentiments and goals can or will be achieved easily or in good spirit. The scale of SA’s feat was deftly captured by John McDermott, chief Africa correspondent of The Economist, in his observation that “[talks] that take months, or even years, in Europe were completed within less than a fortnight in the Rainbow Nation”.
For all the haste, though, the import will be inescapably lasting.
Morris is head of media at the SA Institute of Race Relations.