President Cyril Ramaphosa won’t walk away from the ANC’s deal with the DA, Professor Adam Habib said on Sunday.
Habib, director of Oriental and African studies at the University of London, said there was equally no doubt that the DA was not planning on walking away from its deal with Ramaphosa.
“The Government Of National Unity (GNU) is on the ropes and South Africa will ultimately be the loser. I argued earlier that ‘leaders must be prepared to compromise. Watch what you say in public and be courteous in your engagements with your partners. Focus less on your ego and more on your political goals.’’
“Unfortunately this simple lesson was not heeded. Some DA leaders deliberately went out to antagonise. Others insisted on doing negotiations through letters. Do you not even know our own history, or that of most democracies? The DA has displayed an astonishing immaturity,” the professor added.
EFF deputy President Floyd Shivambu said what was evident was that the ANC had resolved and committed to working with the DA only.
Shivambu said due to the ANC’s commitment to working with the DA, the party felt emboldened to make unreasonable, “irrational” and disrespectful demands, which according to him would shift the control of the economy totally to the “architects” of apartheid and colonialism.
“We led an EFF delegation to meet with the ANC on two occasions, we spoke on principles, never made any elite demand (not even on National Treasury), and the meetings were broken and a false report tabled to the ANC collective that the EFF is making unreasonable demands to participate in the ‘’GNU”.
“The movement is voluntarily handing political power to the establishment whose primary and stated objective is to protect and insulate their undue privilege,” he said.
However, in a dramatic twist of events, the party expressed its willingness to work with the ANC, with an option of removing the DA and Freedom Front Plus from the constituting of the seventh administration.
In a letter penned to ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula by the EFF’s Secretary-General Marshall Dlamini, the party said it believes that both parties are perfect partners taking in consideration their similarities in policy position.
For this partnership to succeed, Dlamini proposed a new agreement or Statement of Intent between the EFF and ANC.
The EFF further proposed that the “new agreement” should include, among other things, the principles of redress and equality.
It continued to affirm the principle that the president and premiers have the prerogative to determine the composition of the executive, it however, said can be done after consultation with the leadership of the EFF.
At the same time, Numsa’s general secretary Irvin Jim agreed with the EFF’s proposal, saying it made sound ideological sense.
“The EFF’s letter to the ANC is a correct political ideological position. Numsa supports it as there is absolutely no need for the ANC to form a government with right wing capitalist political parties and anti-worker, union-bashing political parties that supported racism against blacks.
“The ANC should form a government with EFF, UDM and MK Party, and lock out the DA of Helen Zille and Freedom Front +,” Jim said.
The Star