What the GNU has delivered a year into its existence

SA has taken a step backwards with downward revisions in GDP growth

- MUSHTAK PARKER

BY WHICHEVER performance metrics you choose, assessing the state of the Government of National Unity (GNU) as it marks its first anniversary on June 30 would be premature.

Policymakers all over the world know only too well that the average gestation period to formulate, consult, debate, legislate, implement and deliver on their pledges usually spans a few years, to the chagrin and frustration of course of their hapless voters.

The exceptions are emergency measures usually pertaining to national security issues both at home and abroad. Then of course there are those occasions when leaders who by virtue of being elected think that they have a divine right to rule and to hell with constitutional niceties, checks and balances, independence of the judiciary, integrity of the conduct in public office, which brings an already beleaguered liberal democratic process into further disrepute with incalculable impact on the lived experience of ordinary citizens and the wider global geopolitics and economy.

South Africa and the US, for instance unfortunately have both been blessed with the misfortune of electing two leaders over the last two decades whose primary claim to fame is state capture, cronyism, a wanton self-enrichment, the use of lawfare to entrench their status quo — the one revelling in the fact that the clinical consequences of sexual promiscuity can be washed off by the quality of your soap and the power of your shower, and the other driven by a tiresome narcissism and robber baron economic ethos whose weltanschauung is that of a real estate reality show host who sees a riviera through the looking glass of every geopolitical horror, human suffering and conflict.