MAKHUDU SEFARA | Had ANC listened to service delivery cries, it wouldn’t have to deal with Helen Zille today

As the bickering about cabinet positions sets in and accusations of negotiating in bad faith reach fever pitch while letters between the ANC and the DA are leaked, reality is slowly but surely setting in for a good number of people.

While the DA puts its foot down about its demand for party leader John Steenhuisen to become deputy president and for 11 other key ministerial portfolios, many in the ANC, who under normal circumstances would have been automatic choices for cabinet positions, are beginning to have restless nights.

Many of them, who are accustomed to blue lights courtesy of taxpayers, are worried sick about how the DA is seeking to displace them from positions to which they feel so entitled. The DA is power-hungry, they point out the obvious, as if they are not. They wonder how they could be so close (40%) to power and yet feel it move away from the ANC in so devastating a manner.

If the DA has its way, the ANC ministers who used to lead the following departments should look elsewhere: mineral resources and energy; transport; trade, industry and competition; public works and infrastructure; public service and administration; co-operative governance and traditional affairs; justice; home affairs; international relations and co-operation; and communication and digital technologies.

The DA’s demands are meant to ensure the ANC never recovers.

In addition, Steenhuisen must either be made deputy president or be given the deputy finance minister’s position on the proviso he is involved in putting together the budget, or he must be made minister in the presidency responsible for monitoring and evaluation. Some have already said the latter reeks of “supervisor tendencies”, with Steenhuisen becoming de facto principal monitoring everyone’s activities.

“Outlandish and outrageous” was the ANC’s reaction through secretary-general Fikile Mbalula. “The GNU cannot be held to ransom by any single party,” he said.

President Cyril Ramaphosa said the GNU “cannot be preoccupied with jockeying for positions, tussles over appointments”.

What is clear is that the ANC is getting to grips with the fact that power has slipped through its fingers. Anxieties are setting in, blood pressures are rising, migraines are increasing.  

We, mere mortals, must hope the pain the ANC is going through is enough to help refocus our leaders on what, at the end of the day, is the real business of government: service delivery.

When many journalists wrote critically about the government, reminding them to deliver services as speedily as possible, some thought the media just doesn’t like them. Alarmists, they screamed. They thought civil society organisations like Section27 that took them to court to force them to eradicate pit latrines were overzealous lots. That such pressure was necessary to deliver is tragic, but the response to the pressure is sanctimonious balderdash.

When the media wrote critically, their patriotism was brought into question. Sycophantic bureaucrats who didn't have the courage to tell their ministers they were sleeping on the job could not bring themselves to tell their political masters the media was correct to turn up the heat. The best they could do was claim editors have toxic pens.

But today, when they sit in their homes and listen to DA federal chair Helen Zille tell them what time it is, who gets what and how the president’s prerogative to appoint has been eclipsed, they surely must rue the days they twiddled their thumbs instead of delivering, as though they were entitled to rule until Jesus returned.

That they, at this hour, are wondering how the final cabinet will look ought to move something inside to help them do things differently going forward. That they feel helpless seeing the DA run around emboldened by the ANC’s weaknesses must force them to admit that they — and not the media or NGOs — are architects of their own misfortunes.

The GNU cross is theirs to carry.

When Ramaphosa’s spokesperson Vincent Magwenya tweets, for example, about the president’s “prerogative to appoint cabinet members”, Zille reminds him of “the small matter of the agreement ... signed on June 14”.

If Ramaphosa ignores it, all bets are off. Who is in charge now? Isn’t it amazing what 21% of the vote can give one party?

In addition, the DA claims it needs to have the right to choose its own director generals (DGs), and we already know the DGs will set fire beneath other senior officials’ seats and the pain will cascade. The very officials who failed to tell ministers the truth, always telling them what they thought the politicians wanted to hear, are directly in the line of fire.

It is unfortunate that we have made “speaking truth to power” such a heroic thing when it must be what everyone does. The kind of life made possible by merely being a member of cabinet can have the effect of making ministers believe their lies. They become so divorced from reality that they only read it in newspapers and at online news sites.

When we told Mbalula he shouldn’t say to people who don’t have water that at least the ANC brought taps to your homes, he thought we did not like the ANC. He, like many of his comrades, was consumed by arrogance. The same arrogance that saw him arrive in a poor village in a R3m car to campaign. The disconnect, the insensitivity was mind-numbing.

When we complained for years about load-shedding and former Eskom CEO André de Ruyter, they wanted us to accept it as a new normal. When the people of Seshego and eThekwini complained about water, they were ignored. Today the chickens are coming home to roost.

What is sad is that this is the beginning of the end.

The point is not to kick a floored, dying horse, but to raise a mirror and hope humility returns to the once humble party of Oliver Tambo, a party of servant leaders.

In many ways, this moment represents a light-bulb moment. Being at the mercy of Zille, the boss lady, we must hope helps shed some of the arrogance.

Let me be clear: the ANC is in this fix, temporary though it may appear, but a fix nonetheless because it hates the EFF and that the EFF is born of the ANC and has held its own so far. If the EFF was an IFP splinter, the animosity would not be this great. Consumed by its toxic relations with the EFF, the ANC has dug a hole that has seen it dance to Zille’s tune up to this point of the negotiations.

The EFF, too, is consumed by its pride that has seen it outside the GNU when it needed to play dumb and focus on the prize. The uncomfortable truth, but one the EFF knows, is that the ANC was not genuine when it said all parties are welcome in the GNU. The ANC immediately accepted it would not meet the EEF’s demands simply because it did not want to work with it. It made no meaningful effort to find mutual accommodation. The EFF ought to have known this and eliminated all excuses. But it did not. Its leaders were not desperate for positions, it said. Strategy made way for political pride.

The ANC is in a fix with the madam, the EFF is watching the party former president Kgalema Motlanthe described as “racist” making a stake for 10 ministries and causing delays in the announcement of the government.

In the words of possible incoming leader of the opposition John Hlophe, the DA has the ANC by the proverbial balls.

When we said the ANC must prioritise service delivery, they thought we were overzealous critics with toxic pens. Had they listened, they wouldn’t have to deal with Zille today. We must hope what the ANC is going through today is a lesson they will never forget. We must hope this slow process of loss of power is so painful it teaches them to value an opportunity to provide services to poor people wherever they are found.

We must hope the pretence of only showing up during elections bearing cheap Chinese-made T-shirts will come to an end. May the pain of uncertainty, of power loss, help them to find the humility that sent their forebears to exile for they, at the very least, did not have the arrogance we have seen of late.