President Cyril Ramaphosa in discussion with Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana before replying to the SONA debate in the Cape Town City Hall on February 13, 2025. Picture: GCIS
Dr. Trevor Ngwane
SOUTH Africa has not been immune to Donald Trump’s rampage like a bull in a china shop through economic, political and legal institutions which successive governments in the USA and the world had relied upon to carry out their daily business as usual.
There was great danger that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s 2025 State of the Nation Address (SONA) would lose focus and be overtaken by Trump’s ridiculous utterances about the plight of the white tribe of Africa, the Afrikaners. Ramaphosa managed to skirt this danger and to convey his important message about the country’s progress, challenges, and plans under the Government of National Unity (GNU).
He was helped by the absurdity of Trump’s accusation that Afrikaners were so oppressed in South Africa that the US government was willing to grant them refugee status. It turned out that the Afrikaners are sitting pretty in democratic South Africa and none of them want to lose their white privilege in exchange for an uncertain future in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Nevertheless, Trump’s intervention defined and clarified the fault lines in the elite political toenadering upon which the rule of the GNU rests.What turned out to be a storm in a teacup was started by the AfriForum, the self-appointed voice of Afrikanerdom, when it embarked on several tours around the world telling whoever cared to listen that Afrikaners were being murdered on their farms in South Africa and that the ANC and the EFF were pushing through laws that would legalise expropriation without compensation of white farms.
In the USA they received a good audience from the right-wingers there who had been rejuvenated by Trump’s political campaigns.The ANC was in power for 30 years during which it protected private ownership of property and showed little appetite for large-scale land redistribution let alone expropriation without compensation of white farms.
However, with 75% of privately owned land still in the hands of whites, who make up 8% of the population, and Blacks who are nearly 80% owning only 4% of such land, the failure of the ANC to rectify this historical injustice was bound to catch up with it. It did as the party lost support in successive elections culminating in losing its parliamentary majority in the May 2024 elections which opened the door to the GNU.
Behind the dismal manner in which the ANC has dealt with the land question is the politics of class collaboration whereby the party elite has consistently sacrificed the interests of the black working class to the benefit of white monopoly capital. The sudden ANC interest in land redistribution that led to the recent passing of a watered-down Expropriation Act has been and continues to be largely performative.
It is all pretence and make-believe to stop the party from hemorrhaging votes and to cling to power. In his book, The Great Pretenders: Race and Class under ANC Rule, Ebrahim Harvey puts his finger on the guile and hypocrisy of the ANC leadership.Can we expect the GNU to implement policies that will reduce the poverty, unemployment and inequality that beset the working class and the poor?
Ramaphosa’s SONA set the GNU three major priorities, namely: ‘Firstly, to drive inclusive growth and job creation. Secondly, to reduce poverty and tackle the high cost of living. Thirdly, to build a capable, ethical and developmental state.’
What is disillusioning is that it all sounds so familiar, ‘it was about the same thing we have listened to over the past few years. There were only some smaller changes here and there,’ said Professor André Duvenhage, a political analyst from North-West University.
There was a lot of emphasis on the role of the private sector in helping the country overcome the various aspects of its economic crisis. Private investment will be sought in infrastructure building, electricity generation and freight transportation. Although the President spoke about allocating ‘R375 billion in spending by state-owned companies,’ his love affair with and belief in the private sector will undoubtedly see a lot of this money forked out through contracts rather than helping to build the internal capacity of state-owned companies.
A major mistake made by the ANC in its failed economic development programme over the past 30 years was to exclude the masses, trade unions, community organisations and other organs of the working class from development.
Instead, the ANC was persuaded by the World Bank to abandon the people-driven, people-centred developmental vision of the Reconstruction and Development Programme and replace it with a top-down, trickle-down, capitalist-driven development model.
The ANC leadership of the GNU is not going to radicalize its vision for South Africa. It will only entangle it more into the politics of class collaboration and putting profit before people. Trump’s ravings may sound like those of a madman, but there is a method to the madness.
He wants to roll back all the gains made by the working class in the struggle for socioeconomic justice, racial and gender equality and worker rights in the US and everywhere in the world. He wants South Africa to fall in line with his imperialist agenda and build a world where the techno-capitalists call the shots.
In his SONA, Ramaphosa spoke bravely about South Africa refusing to be bullied by Trump, but the ANC leadership is well-rehearsed in bending over backwards in the face of the power of capital. Parties in the GNU like the DA may shirk away from the idea of emigrating to the US but they share some important political positions and social attitudes with the AfriForum.
Ramaphosa made a call ‘on all South Africans, united in our diversity, to come together in the National Dialogue to define a vision for our country for the next 30 years.’ The working class should keep away from such a dialogue as its outcome will ensure another 30 years of poverty, unemployment and inequality.
What is needed is a working-class alternative to the GNU’s capitalist vision.
* Dr. Trevor Ngwane is a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology, University of Johannesburg.
** The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of The African.