(Graphic: John McCann/M&G)
Undoubtedly, last year was a groundbreaking year for South Africa, with the formation of the government of national unity (GNU).
While the roles of party leaders such as President Cyril Ramaphosa and the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) John Steenhuisen in the GNU negotiations are well-known, what is less appreciated is that a large supporting cast of politicians from every party, including heroes and rogues, also shaped the situation we are in now.
A survey of my database of 3 559 top online news articles from throughout last year on IOL, News24 and TimesLive shows just how prominent these supporting politicians have been — their names show the strongest associations with each of the four largest political parties.
Party spokespeople tend to show up regularly in association with their parties’ names because they are quoted on a diverse range of topics, so I have left them out of this analysis. But the database shows how many others had an outsize influence on the significant shake-up that was 2024. Here is a party-by-party round-up of who they are and what they’ve done.
ANC
The top name associated with the ANC in last year’s news is secretary general Fikile Mbalula.
This will come as no surprise to some because of his key role in the GNU negotiations.
When I looked for close associations with Mbalula’s name, one was David Makhura — the two men worked together as negotiators in the talks about the GNU and local coalitions like the one in Tshwane.
Mbalula was a key architect of the unity government and has defended it zealously against its detractors.
The word that was associated most strongly with his name is “angrily” because of three TimesLive articles which reported that he had “reacted angrily to an interview [South African Communist Party general secretary Solly] Mapaila gave in which he labelled the decision to enter into a GNU with the DA as a ‘betrayal’ and a ‘sell-out of the aspirations of our people’”.
Mbalula’s rejoinder was, “These outbursts are shocking. Nothing wrong if Solly doesn’t agree with the GNU but calling names is really crossing the line and casting aspersions on ANC leaders. I find it disrespectful coming from an ally.”
While Mbalula has helped to build the unity government, others have worked to maintain it in the face of tension between the parties.
One is Mdumiseni Ntuli, previously the ANC elections head and now the party’s chief whip in the National Assembly. Ntuli, whose name had the second-strongest association with the ANC in last year’s news, has been instrumental in negotiating between the GNU parties on controversial legislation.
He was part of a multi-party team that worked on the contentious clauses of the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act for the unity government’s clearing house mechanism.
He also led a forum where the chief whips of the GNU parties met, discussing other laws such as the now-withdrawn SABC Bill.
On the other side, Gwede Mantashe, whose name had the third-strongest association with the ANC, held talks with the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party after the elections, to no avail.
TimesLive reported that he was “ssaid to be against a coalition with the DA” and was trying, along with Deputy President Paul Mashatile, to convince the ANC national executive committee to form a coalition with leftist parties.
At the same time, Mantashe had to deal with rumours he would be arrested for having Bosasa do security upgrades at his homes in Gauteng and the Eastern Cape.
Democratic Alliance
The name most strongly associated with the DA was Glynnis Breytenbach, an MP and advocate with a reputation for resisting political interference in the judiciary.
Even though the DA is now in government with the ANC, Breytenbach has continued to ask thorny questions in parliament, such as one in August about why South Africa has “only managed to unsuccessfully prosecute three persons for state capture to date” and what steps would be taken to ensure that “persons implicated in state capture are prosecuted successfully and swiftly”.
The question was posed to the then Justice Minister Thembi Simelane, herself under a cloud over a loan linked to the collapse of VBS Mutual Bank.
When Ramaphosa moved Simelane sideways to the department of human settlements, rather than axing her from the cabinet, Breytenbach said his “decision was ‘shortsighted and disrespectful’ to South Africa”.
A far less illustrious name appeared as the second-strongest association with the DA — Renaldo Gouws.
Gouws was elected as a DA MP but a video of him spewing racist vitriol surfaced on social media. The South African Human Rights Commission hauled him to court, and the terminated his party membership.
Fears that Gouws’s actions could disadvantage the party in the GNU talks were not realised but the prominence of this incident in the news seems to have hurt the party’s reputation at a sensitive time.
Federal chairperson Helen Zille, frequently Mbalula’s counterpart in the GNU negotiations, is the third-strongest association with the DA’s name.
She became known for driving a hard bargain in negotiations. One of the words most strongly associated with her name in last year’s news was “ultimatum”, referring to her challenge to Mbalula to reinstall Cilliers Brink as Tshwane mayor or face a halt to negotiations about cooperation in other metros around the country.
Mbalula didn’t blink on Brink and, true enough, talks about co-governing in other municipalities stopped.
Zille plays such a decisive role that Mantashe accused her of behaving like a “parallel president” who wanted to run a “parallel government” made up of the DA cabinet ministers.
Zille called his remarks “the silliest story ever”, maintaining, “I manage the DA as a political party, not the DA in government.”
This didn’t stop Mbalula and Nomvula Mokonyane from calling Zille “the leader of the DA” several times, provoking John Steenhuisen to reassert in an interview that he is actually the boss.
uMkhonto weSizwe party
Both supporting politicians who were most strongly associated with the MK party in last year’s news were axed from their positions, reflecting the new party’s leadership turbulence.
The name most strongly associated with the MK party was Bonginkosi Khanyile, the former #FeesMustFall activist and suspected instigator of the July 2021 riots.
He threatened violence if the MK party was left out of the elections and was removed as the party’s youth leader in April.
The following month, he declared, “Sengizelwe ngokutsha. (I have been born again, I have changed in character. ) I no longer make inflammatory statements.”
Despite this, in August, he was arrested for his threats. He remained loyal to the party, exhorting party members in June not to fight to become MPs on the party list.
The story of the man second-most strongly associated with the MK party, Jabulani Khumalo, could not be more different.
Khumalo founded the party in December 2023 but was later embroiled in a tit-for-tat row in which Jacob Zuma expelled him from the party while he, in turn, suspended Zuma.
A succession of court battles followed. In the latest, he lost an appeal to be recognised as party leader in October.
Economic Freedom Fighters
Media attention has recently been focused on the Red Berets’ elective conference in which Julius Malema was predictably re-elected as party leader.
However, the name most closely associated with the EFF was Nkululeko Dunga, the party’s Gauteng chairperson.
Dunga was a casualty of the falling-out between the ANC and EFF in the Gauteng metro coalitions when he was fired as the member of the mayoral committee for finance in Ekurhuleni in May.
Before the elective conference, Dunga called for “continuity” in the party’s leadership, meaning, of course, that Malema remain commander-in-chief.
He also lobbied on behalf of the man second-most closely associated with the party’s name, Marshall Dlamini, arguing he should keep
the secretary general post, which he did.
In June, Dlamini was given a suspended sentence for assaulting a police officer in parliament in 2019.
He went out on a limb just before the elective conference, saying that Floyd Shivambu, the EFF’s former deputy president who defected to the MK party, was not responsible for the EFF’s heavy electoral losses in KwaZulu-Natal.
This was despite the fact that Malema had laid the blame for these losses at Shivambu’s door.
The final analysis
Ultimately, then, last year’s seismic shift in South Africa’s politics was engineered to a large degree by a large supporting cast of politicians split into three indistinct groups.
Group one comprises those in the ANC, DA and other parties who negotiated carefully behind the scenes to establish the GNU.
Group two consists of loyalists in all four parties, both inside and outside the unity government, who steered them to where they are now.
One of these, Khumalo, has since been cast aside.
Group three are the rogues who have been in and out of trouble with the law. The less we hear from them this year, the better.
Instead, we need a government of national unity that gets quietly to work and shifts attention from personalities to policies that will allow for incremental growth.
We also need robust opposition that will hold them to account in securing better lives for the most disadvantaged South Africans.
As citizens, let’s ensure that groups one and two get going with their work, cooperating with their political rivals to move this country forward.
Ian Siebörger is a senior lecturer in the department of linguistics and applied language studies in the faculty of humanities at Rhodes University.