Simon Nare
ANC Secretary General Fikile Mbalula has dismissed his DA counterpart Helen Zille as a dreamer after her shocking revelation that the current government was a grand coalition between the two parties disguised as a National Government of National Unity (GNU).
Zille, speaking at a German foundation event on Wednesday night, admitted that in fact it was President Cyril Ramaphosa who came up with the idea of a GNU which he said would be easy to sell to his comrades in the ANC National Executive Committee.
Mbalula dismissed Zille’s two-party coalition narrative as hogwash, pointing out that there are 10 political parties that are in the multi-party agreement that formed the government.
‘We don’t have a grand coalition between the DA and the ANC. I think as a journalist you are educated. Does this look like a grand coalition? It’s not. A grand coalition is when one or two parties come together to form a government, that is not what is happening here (in the GNU),” he said.
Mbalula was addressing the media ahead of the ANC’s first NEC meeting since the elections and he said the ANC is the biggest party in GNU and even if all the parties wanted to, they could not remove the party with its 40%
“So, it’s not like we were negotiating with cap in hand. Even Zille asimcengi. If she wants to go, she wants to leave the GNU, she can leave,” said Mbalula.
Zille’s bombshell which surfaced on Thursday on social media seemed to suggest that the President was in talks with the DA alone before he invited other parties for talks
She said: “This is of course not a Government of National Unity because a Government of National Unity would have brought all the parties including the EFF and MK which it did not”.
She added that the multi-party agreement gave the President room to bring other small parties which are not in the coalition with the DA to fulfill his concept of GNU.
“Now the truth is there is no coalition because the coalition means if the party withdraws from the coalition, the government falls,” said Zille, adding that none of the nine other parties had that power.
Mbalula admitted that Zille’s wish, when she started negotiating with the ANC to form a government, was to have a grand coalition and she demanded that the ANC should not talk to parties such as the EFF and MK Party to prevent what she described as a “Doomsday Coalition”.
Mbalula said that was shot down outright because the ANC had letters of intent with other parties at the time.’
“So we are not going to entertain Helen and what she is dreaming about and what she wants. We have a responsibility ourselves and the DA to govern and we will tell by action and the work that we do who has won the hearts and minds of South African going forward.
“As the ANC we are not interested in polemics. We are interested in governing the country and governing very well. That is what is important. The DA is part of the government and we are moving forward nicely. The ANC was the biggest party in the coalition and nothing would move without its involvement.
“We are not going to be engaged in polemics with Helen Zille and whoever wishes to do so. If they want to engage in that terrain they can go on but asizi. We are not going to engage in polemics about who leads and who doesn’t lead.
“The question is: can the ANC do better with the 40% and the leadership it has had in terms of safeguarding power and leading the people of South Africa and doing the right thing? The country is stable, that is the reality. Everything is on track, the government is running and that is what is important for us,” said Mbalula.
He called on South Africans to stop entertaining Zille’s irritation and the ANC will not because if it does that it will be sidetracked from delivering to the people.
Mbalula reiterated that the ANC was the biggest party in the multi-party coalition and nothing would move without its involvement or its consent while he admitted that there were contradictions within the multi-party government because parties didn’t stop to exist and become one.
He said the government continues to be led by the ANC although the party would not be able to navigate the way it used to.
“Our majority has been affected. We will not maneuver and do things like before. The opposition will try to get to us in whatever way they can to try their luck but we know that we hold sway in terms of being the largest party within the GNU.
“There is nothing that can be done without us in this government that we lead,” said Mbalula.
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