Address by Prof William Gumede, Chair of Multi-Party Charter For South Africa (Formerly known as the Moonshot Pact), at the FW de Klerk Foundation’s Coalition Government Conference, 12 July 2024

Well, thank you very much, Madame De Klerk, and thank you, Christo. Thank you to the Foundation for inviting me. I’m very excited to be here.

Possibly, now that I have engaged with every political leader in the country, I’ve spent some time individually with them, including Cyril Ramaphosa. (Believe it or not, I was actually his academic supervisor. At some point in his life he was registered for an MA degree.) And I mean, if our dynamic business leaders, civil society leaders and professionals could be running political parties and governments, we would have a totally different country.

For me, the gap between the state or rather, the political class and the gap between business and civil society (and generally the non-state leaders), is too wide possibly the widest of any in any emerging market from a quality point of view. Normally, for countries to grow, when we talk about developmental states and economic miracles, like Singapore and Poland after the end of communism etc., the leadership quality in non-state sectors and the state is very close. This gap is a very big problem: the quality of our political leadership in the country.

Secondly, also the quality of the state: If you compare the quality of the state and the private sector, again, the gap is one of the widest gaps anywhere in emerging markets. In serious countries that want to develop, the gap between the private sector and the state is usually narrower. E.g., If you look at the quality of the state owned company in Singapore, it would be the equivalent in terms of competitiveness to a private sector company. We do not have that. If you think about our post office: If you compare Postbank to Standard Bank the gap is massive. That already tells you something about why we are not going to get growth, unless the political leadership quality matches the non-state leadership. There needs to be much more alignment in leadership quality between the state and private sector.

I’m going to talk a little bit about the NPC process, but I have to be careful because some things are confidential. I’ll try to find ways to address some issues without revealing too much.

But maybe just the first thing is to differentiate between what is a Government of National Unity (GNU) model. I worked on the model (and incidentally) at the NPC we actually did scenarios, examining the whole spectrum of coalition possibilities. We even considered the possibility of a coalition that excludes the ANC. For example, I explored the Bennett Coalition in Israel, which could have been a possibility if the MK and EFF were not so far apart from the DA and IFP.

In 2020, the Bennett Coalition in Israel had an Arab party and two Zionist parties. These outlier parties were only there to get them into government, but they did not form part of the government itself, except for the Arab party. So, different permutations were considered. We did all of those permutations for what might be possible after the election.

In that sense, we were prepared for different scenarios and how to engage with them. I have written about a GNU and made the call in Sunday Times in 2020 and even as early as 2019. I also have a foundation the Democracy Works Foundation which focuses on governments of national unity in Africa as a governance model in a diverse society. Now the difference between a normal coalition and a Government of National Unity: a GNU is the idea to bring a diversity of parties and ideas and capacities together to deal with a country’s problems. Often, one gets to a GNU model when a country is in deep crisis at every level: when one group alone cannot solve the complex issues alone. A normal coalition will be simply where one gets a majority and then governs.

I want to make an argument to pursue a model of a Government of National Unity in a way that is different; to include non-state actors. I.e. To include civil society and business and professionals. The fundamentals of the model (as it is now) are:

One: The idea of power-sharing. In a GNU it is not 50%+ decision-making (i.e. majority decision-making), it is consensus decision-making. So quite an important thing. Unfortunately, the ANC’s decision-making culture over the last 30 years has been a majority decision making culture. A majority decision-making culture is totally different from a consensus decision-making culture, because if you are in a majority decision-making culture, when someone differs from you, you assert your position. Whereas in a consensus decision-making culture, you do not assert your position. You compromise. In a consensus decision-making culture, everyone compromises at the end of the day and no one gets what they want, not fully. The thing that is so exciting about consensus decision-making, is that all economic miracle societies since the second world war (whether in developing countries or in the Western World) sustainable economic growth has been mostly based on consensus decision-making, whether it is in Germany, or Japan, or South Korea or in Africa.

And that is the beauty of consensus: One, it forces, by default (every political party and government) to always make decisions in the public interests of the country and not in the interests of an individual political party. This is very important. If South Africa wants to get growth, if we want to deal with our issues, we have to make policy decisions, whether it is economic policy decisions or foreign policy decisions, in the public interests of the country and not in the interests of a political party’s interests. (Because political parties have different interests to a state. The ANC’s interests, or President Ramaphosa’s individual or political interests, are not the same as the country’s interests, as the public’s interests. It has been very difficult culturally, in terms of our political culture for the last 30 years, people have conflated the ANC’s interests with the country’s interests, or the public’s interests. It is not the same. Or often, other political parties think that their interests are the country’s interests. It is not. It is a different thing. The beauty of consensus decision-making is that it forces decisions in the public’s interests.

The second thing about consensus decision-making in a diverse society with our kind of past is that it forces decisions to be based on the present and the future. In South Africa a lot of political parties, or political positions (and even our economic views) are based on the past, not the present or the future. This undermines our economic growth. It is a binding constraint on our country’s growth. The 2006 UNESCO’s report on inequality in the world, showed something interesting: In countries where present decisions are based on the past (like South Africa) it really is a constraint on growth. In order to get the economic growth, one almost has to suspend the past, to focus more on the future to get the growth.

A weakness in the GNU model is the public sector itself: In many countries when they put together national coalitions (in the West), sometimes negotiations go on for six months, nine months, but the state functions. Why does the state function? Because the public sector is professional and takes its decisions from the Constitution. What we’ve had is a public sector that takes its decisions from a governing party, resulting in state culture becoming intertwined with the governing political party’s culture. There is a five-year cycle for the GNU to bridge this gap to deliver. Or, if they cannot bridge this gap, to bring in a non-state actor to deliver public services and focus on the core parts that can deliver growth. This may be the grown-up pragmatic decision-making based on the present, not ideology, that is needed.

Then there is the case of conflict resolution: there has to be a way to deal with conflict resolution. The most important thing is to pre-agree on how to manage the conflicts. E.g. A political committee or structure that runs parallel to the GNU where the senior members of the parties can deal with issues, whether it is conflicts or tensions.

I think that the GNU may cause a realignment in our politics in a totally different way, in an angle that we never actually thought, because the parties can either become closer to each other or fall out spectacularly. If they get closer to each other there would be the potential of an alignment over time, where potentially a new centre for South Africa could be created. I mean a big part of it, the elephant in the room, is how the ANC is going to manage its own internal dynamics. We’ve seen it here in Gauteng: the Gauteng ANC actually took on Ramaphosa and the ANC’s National Executive Council by excluding the DA from substantial positions in provincial government, despite the fact that Ramaphosa sent them a directive. Fikile Mbalula met with them and they refused to move and challenged the ANC leadership and directly challenged Ramaphosa.

Now let me talk about the non-state (business, civil society and professional). Without the non-state the GNU is not going to work. It is going to be very, very important that we have co-delivery. We do not look at a “social pact” as being driven by a party or a government, but it is almost an equal partnership with business and with civil society. This would demand an ideological shift to look at it that way. This would allow us to bring in the ideas and energy and resources from the private sector, because currently these ideas, the energy and intellect and resources sit outside the state.