Cyril Ramaphosa at the oath of office ceremony for his second term as South African President at the Union Buildings in Pretoria on June 19, 2024. (Photo by Kim LUDBROOK / POOL / AFP)
President Cyril Ramaphosa will deliver his first address to the opening of parliament since leading the ANC to an election loss fresh from a meeting of his new coalition cabinet.
The president cryptically described the two-day lekgotla as “wonderful” during a doorstop interview this week.
Sources familiar with discussions at the meeting said it did see parties spanning the breadth of the political spectrum to find a level of rapprochement on policies that have long divided them.
This includes the standoff between the ANC and the Democratic Alliance (DA) on race-based redress, which the latter firmly rejected in 2019 after internal divisions on the subject contributed to the departure of Lindiwe Mazibuko as its parliamentary leader.
There is now an understanding between the two parties that broad-based black economic empowerment is non-negotiable government policy, but that the ANC will take a less hardline approach to meet the DA “if not quite halfway”, then somewhere approaching the middle, on prescripts seen as hostile to its constituency.
Likewise there has been detente on the National Health Insurance Act, which was perhaps easier to reach.
Revisiting some of its most contentious clauses was one of the DA’s initial conditions for opening coalition talks with the ANC, put across shortly after it became apparent that the party had lost its majority.
Even at that stage, the Ramaphosa camp deemed the request “not unreasonable”, given that the president understood the reservations about the bill, but yielded to pressure within the ANC to promulgate it before election day.
The takeaway from the lekgotla is that the blunt edges of the legislation will be softened in the time it will take the treasury to find the funding for the healthcare overhaul.
In practical terms, this has given the DA hope that there will be concessions to allow patients to choose their doctors and consult specialists where no state referral was forthcoming. It could extend as far as allowing private medical aids a bigger role than merely catering for cosmetic procedures.
The probable infringement on the right to agency in an intimate sphere was one of the grounds on which the DA was likely to attack the act in a lawsuit party leader John Steenhuisen said it would file “without delay” when Ramaphosa signed the bill a fortnight before the vote.
On Wednesday, Steenhuisen referred to the law in his traditional briefing ahead of the president’s address, where he sent that message that the DA had not sold its soul for six seats in the cabinet.
“The DA is still here, we have not changed, and we are primed to position ourselves within this new paradigm where we will offer our unique vision for the future of our country,” he said.
“This means that we will continue to fight against problematic national policies and legislation such as the National Health Insurance Act, the Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill, and any proposal which is anti-constitutional or seeks to divide and regress South Africans,” Steenhuisen said.
But the review application on the National Health Insurance Act has been shelved, and while sources said the DA was unlikely to withdraw any legal challenges to executive decisions that are already before the courts it might “not rush to court so readily” in future.
This means it might have to refrain from taking on review the National Assembly’s endorsement of the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party’s nomination of former judge John Hlophe to serve on the Judicial Service Commission which urged the same chamber to impeach him for gross conduct.
The nomination posed the first test of unity for the multi-party coalition.
Four parties opposed it, while several championed it. But it was not so much the lack of consensus among coalition partners that favoured Hlophe but the ANC’s fear that it could not rely on its own caucus to unanimously reject the appointment if it were put to a secret ballot in the assembly.
The court cases filed by the former official opposition — a role now occupied by the MK party — that will continue include its challenge to the ministerial determination for the procurement of 2 500 megawatts of nuclear energy, which Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosienthso Ramokgopa last week said he will be happy to oppose.
In the same breath, the minister fired a warning at the DA that it must remember that it was part not of a “federation” but of a unity government designed to implement common policy.
The DA’s continued insistence on its distinct identity was always a given, particularly with a view to the 2026 local government elections.
But, in their maiden budget vote speeches, the new DA ministers took care to pledge allegiance to existing policy in a number of ways.
Steenhuisen, the agriculture minister, committed to the Agriculture and Agro-processing Master Plan (AAMP), which was adopted in 2022 as the framework for growth in the sector.
“The AAMP adoption process has enjoyed broad sectoral support and I wish to clarify that I have no intention of reinventing the wheel,” he said in a speech in which he also took care to pay tribute to farm workers.
Similarly, home affairs minister Leon Schreiber referenced the findings of Operation Vulindlela, an initiative of the presidency, in his speech where he announced he would revive the Immigration Advisory Board, after last week giving a six-month reprieve to foreign nationals awaiting the outcome of visa and waiver applications.
Some of these initiatives were run by colleagues in the lekgotla ahead of their public statements, those familiar with cabinet discussions said.
Not so Dean Macpherson’s announcement hours before he was sworn in as public works and infrastructure minister that there would be no new residences and other perks for ministers on his watch.
Macpherson has been taken aside and told not to frighten the horses, sources suggested this week, after Ramaphosa at the cabinet meeting asked ministers to consult rather than court publicity.
The lekgotla also saw confirmation that the Pan Africanist Congress’s Mzwanele Nyhontso, as land reform minister, would not advocate expropriation without compensation, though this decision was taken unilaterally shortly after the party agreed to join what Ramaphosa calls his government of national unity.
That means that calls for a constitutional amendment in this regard will come solely from the MK party and its ally the Economic Freedom Fighters.
Some of the early unity in the coalition also reads as a united front to the threat all partners agree Jacob Zuma’s party poses to stability. Steenhuisen on Wednesday said the DA was unlikely to support a motion of no confidence in Ramaphosa over the Phala Phala controversy.
He told a media briefing the DA would “take our chances on the side of the president on this one”, rather than play into the hands of opposition party leaders who face more serious allegations, notably those raised against the EFF leadership in the VBS scandal.
It is expected that Hlophe, as its parliamentary leader, will seek to land body blows on Ramaphosa when he opens the debate on the president’s address on Friday, after parliament this week revised its rules to provide for the reality of coalition government.