Can the Democratic Alliance contain the ANC?

Since the DA joined the government last year, tempering expectations has always been important.

The ANC still believes in the Freedom Charter, the National Democratic Revolution, and self-enrichment; state failure has been accelerating for decades; and the DA is a junior partner with a difficult task.

Recently, however, the DA disappointed—even tempered—expectations, failing an important test at least four times. This test was whether the DA could seize opportunities to constrain the ANC and use those to drive its own agenda.

At the time of writing this article, the fifth test was already underway — how the DA would respond to President Donald Trump’s executive order. Hopefully, it will fare better than in the previous four.

The First Test: International Relations

It is not every day that the most powerful man in the world, Donald Trump, and the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, both take time to criticise the South African government.

Before issuing his executive order in recent days, Trump’s public statements on South Africa took aim at two related issues: the Expropriation Act and discrimination.

Trump correctly recognises the Expropriation Act as the beginning of a new phase of expropriation in South Africa. His advisors may overestimate the speed at which it will be implemented, but who knows? True, the legislation can be challenged legally and is unconstitutional, but that does not change the government’s clear intent — to expropriate significantly more at significantly below market value.

Instead of pointing out the truth in Trump’s statement, contextualising it, and leveraging it to corner the ANC, the DA got stuck on word choices and helped the ANC downplay the Expropriation Act.

Ten months ago, before entering government, the DA condemned the Expropriation Act in the strongest possible terms, calling it:

• “Expropriation without compensation smuggled in through the legislative backdoor”
• “Disguised expropriation”
• “A reckless attack on the Constitution”
• “A direct threat”

Then, as if its previous stance never existed, the DA last week declared that the Expropriation Act does not constitute expropriation without compensation nor circumvent the Constitution. It even criticised organisations that hold views identical to those the DA itself held only recently.

In one of its statements, the DA even suggested that the only constitutional problem with the law is the sequence of expropriation procedures.

That the propping up of the Expropriation Act has now gone too far is evident from subsequent attempts by various DA leaders to firm up the party’s stance. The party has now announced it has filed a court application to oppose the Expropriation Act.

Depending on the substance of the challenge, this can be a positive development. But there is considerable damage that now needs to be undone.

The DA’s handling of the Expropriation Act has not contributed to a balanced and consistent approach to this issue.

Of course, the DA does not need to defend every aspect of President Trump’s statements. But the correct response is not to appease, deny reality, or defend the ANC’s policies on its behalf.

The correct response is well-formulated, consistent, and firm resistance to the Expropriation Act.

The DA also missed the opportunity to challenge the ANC on discrimination. Trump is completely correct in saying the government treats certain groups of people very badly.

The most obvious example of bad treatment is the thousands of pieces of legislation, regulations, and quotas targeting white people, usually under the guise of “public interest” or “redress” in favour of black people.

It is, therefore, no abstract question when Elon Musk asks Cyril Ramaphosa on X why openly racist ownership laws exist in South Africa. The single biggest reason Starlink is not available in South Africa is because of this government’s racial ownership demands.

Other groups are also increasingly on the receiving end of targeted “very bad treatment” by the government—including landowners in general, Afrikaans speakers, particularly Afrikaners, as well as English, Indian and Coloured communities.

Then there are also the unintended harms. Just because the government does not deliberately intend to harm black people does not mean they don’t suffer too.

The economy is an interlinked chain of value creation, where people from all groups do business with each other. When the government damages one group economically, all the others also suffer due to the colourblind negative multiplier effect.

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The Second Test: Transformation Funds

As recently as early January, tenacious DA MPs exposed Minister Parks Tau’s R100 billion transformation fund.

However, the credibility of their efforts was undermined when, last week, the DA’s own Minister of Agriculture issued regulations for an agricultural transformation fund for the third time during his term.

Under these regulations, 20% of statutory market levies on soybeans, table grapes, and dried vinefruit are allocated for “transformation”.

So, while one part of the DA was fighting against ANC transformation slush funds, another part was actively implementing the same ANC policy.

That Minister Steenhuisen’s transformation funds amount to millions rather than billions, or that they are housed in smaller structures than Minister Tau’s, does not change the principle.

The Third Test: The National Health Insurance (NHI) Act

After some talks with the ANC, and apparently receiving verbal assurances, DA Cabinet members were quick to claim a “breakthrough” on the NHI earlier this month. As far as we can tell, however, this rests on nothing more than verbal assurances from ANC officials, while the NHI Act remains unchanged.

The problem is that the DA is evidently trying to create an impression of progress, which could reduce pressure against the NHI at a time when pressure should be increasing, not decreasing. This shifts the goalposts and gives the ANC the opportunity to define the terms of negotiation in its favour.

The Fourth Test: The State of the Nation Address (SONA)

This year’s State of the Nation Address was essentially no different from any of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s previous ones. Yet, whereas the DA previously rejected every SONA, this year it embraced it as if it were something entirely new and fresh.

John Steenhuisen even declared: “As the leader of the DA, I am extremely proud to say that our policies were front and center in the President’s State of the Nation Address.”

One does not know whether this is an admission of guilt, or gullibility, but the DA’s policies simply are not “front and centre” to President Ramaphosa or the ANC. No one believes such a statement, and the only result is that the DA places itself within an ANC framework and outside the public’s sense of credibility.

Conclusion

Good governance does not require perfection.

Perfection should therefore not be demanded from the ANC, the DA, or any other party in government.

However, where any party in government steers the business environment and society in the wrong direction, it must be called out and corrected.

Four times these past two weeks, the DA unfortunately failed a crucial test — the test of whether it can contain the ANC. Thankfully, these opportunities are not forever lost — they will arise again. The challenge is to be prepared for them.

If the DA keeps failing these tests, its contribution to constructive reform within the government must be seriously called into question.

*An Afrikaans version of this article was published in Rapport, on 9 February 2025, here.*