GNU: what do the options mean

The DA's opposition to the VAT hike in the proposed Budget and its court challenge to interdict it have brought the government of national unity (GNU) to the brink.

- By Ferial Haffajee

Talks have been taking place, mainly between the ANC and DA, to determine whether the coalition can be saved.

Daily Maverick looks at three possible scenarios and what each may mean for South Africans. The three charts on these pages show the parties in Parliament. Scenario 1 is the existing GNU. In Scenario 2, ActionSA and Build One South Africa (Bosa) join the GNU and the DA leaves. In Scenario 3, the EFF is brought into government along with ActionSA and Bosa, and the DA leaves.

Note that these are moving scenarios in which much may change.

Scenario 1: status quo holds

In Scenario 1, the ANC and DA realise that although they don't like each other, most South Africans support the GNU, and its establishment almost a year ago gave the country a fighting chance. The country's risk standing has improved and so has its investment outlook, although 14 attacks by US President Donald Trump's administration have harmed economic prospects.

Scenario 1 is the most likely outcome, but it can change. "We want to keep the GNU intact, [but] you can't have the DA insulting the President [Cyril Ramaphosa] and other Cabinet members. At some point, it will break," said an ANC-aligned official who is not in the talks but close to them.

Asked whether the GNU was at an "impasse", he said the relationship was "beyond that" because the DA had taken the 0.5 percentage point VAT increase to court.

The DA's lawfare strategy, in which it fights politics in court, has worked well for the party, but the jury is out on whether one can be both partner and legal adversary so often in a GNU. The parties are facing off over the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act, the National Health Insurance Act and the Expropriation Act. The latter has modernised old land expropriation laws and made expropriation without compensation a possibility after a long process set out in the law. No land in South Africa has been expropriated without compensation since 1994.