VAT chance: GNU wanders the desert as DA poses as Messiah

Political posturing has meant the government of national unity has been completely unable to table a Budget

- Bhekisisa Mncube

Ah, Chief Dwasaho! My leader, you who preached fire and brimstone at dusty crossroads throughout Mzansi, or so your biographer would have us believe, must surely recall the scripture, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning” (Psalm 30:5).

Let us not forget the post-election hustle between 2 June 2024, when the Electoral Commission of South Africa announced the final results of the national and provincial elections, and 14 June 2024, when the National Assembly convened and reluctantly re-elected you as tenant-in-chief at Mahlamba Ndlopfu.

And the joy? It did not cometh in the morning. It came, almost sheepishly, in the late afternoon of 14 June, wrapped in last-minute haggling and reluctant applause. It would take you, Comrade Leadership, 288 hours or 12 sleepless nights of backroom deal-making, sharp elbows from DA don Helen Zille and frantic shuttling between boardrooms. All to cobble together a government stitched with chewing gum and faith, but no clear mandate from the people — the second government of national unity (GNU).

Cynics may ask: what unity?

Nine months into this much-fancied GNU, there has been no joy. Only the unrelenting weeping and gnashing of teeth for the “leader of society”, the ANC.

Unity for whom

Since you announced your all-inclusive Cabinet on 30 June 2024, it has been more than 300 days of looking at your back, weeping in silence and watching this so-called voluntary GNU unravel like a poorly stitched funeral suit.

Unlike the first GNU in 1994, helmed by President Nelson Mandela and anchored in the authority of a negotiated interim Constitution, yours was not born of a national imperative but of political expedience, a patched-together survival political strategy masquerading as unity.

Unity for whom? The political upper class divided the cake among themselves. For the people? Not even crumbs so far, there has been No Value Added.