By Lee-Yandra Paulsen
Following President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Opening of Parliament Address on Thursday, political analyst Tessa Dooms provided a post-analysis of the speech.
“I think yesterday was interesting on a political level because before we had the Opening of Parliament (OPA), we also had the so-called Progressive Caucus forming for the first time,” Dooms stated.
“These are opposition parties not in the Government of National Unity (GNU), including the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), uMkhoto we Sizwe (MK) party, and African Transformation Movement (ATM). These parties are coming together around a resistance agenda against the GNU. It is an anti-GNU coalition more than anything else at this point,” she shared.
Dooms estimates that parliament will be driven by two coalitions of convenience.
“There will be a governing coalition of the willing, people who work together as it serves their ends, demonstrating they can govern. This is what drives most individuals to be in the GNU,” she said.
“Then there is a coalition of the wounded, those who feel they deserved more from the election based on their performance. This means that parties like the Democratic Alliance (DA), which would have been more critical of the president’s speech, are unlikely to take on that role now. It will be curious to see the beginning of the debate because the president’s speech is not very different from the one, he delivered in February, unfortunately.”
Dooms criticized the president’s lack of a prioritised agenda.
“The president did exactly what he did with the cabinet—he gave us a potpourri of everything, with no clear vision or new direction in governance,” she explained.
She noted that there are two rival camps: one agreeing with the president regardless of what he says and the other disagreeing no matter what.
“When the president talks about unity, he refers to the unity of the parties and the political establishment, not the nation. There is no real engagement with the South African populace on what this moment means,” Dooms said.
She argued that the president missed an opportunity to address the public about the election outcomes.
“The president should have acknowledged that the elections were a strong warning and consequence for bad governance. All politicians took a hit during these elections, and we need to pivot dramatically in how we govern,” Dooms remarked.
Dooms highlighted the need to address racialised inequality.
“If we do not name what divides us, how can we know what unity looks like? We’re talking about political unity, not addressing the country’s actual issues. We must avoid mythologising this moment like we did in 1994, papering over the cracks, which is exactly what the president’s speech did,” she noted.
In terms of what the next five years will look like under the banner of the GNU, Dooms said it is not all doom and gloom.
“I don’t think the GNU means a worse scenario, but we’re not in a necessarily better place than before the election. Unless the GNU puts forth a different agenda and politics, it’s just a reorganisation and reconsolidation of political power. Every political party seems to be pushing its own agenda within the GNU, and I don’t think they are very united as it stands right now,” she concluded.
VOC News
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