Bela and factional strife stress test the GNU

Friday will tell whether the ANC and the Democratic Alliance (DA) can find a way out of the impasse over the Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela) Act that has turned into a test for a coalition strained by six months of policy battles.

The 13th of December marks the end of the consultation period President Cyril Ramaphosa announced after he signed the Act to allow parties to find each other on contentious clauses.

This has not transpired.

Instead, ANC ministers have resisted reviewing the Act because it was passed before the May election outcome forced the party into a coalition with the DA. Some within the ANC have called for the head of Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube, and her office and the presidency have accused each other of lying.

The DA said this week it hoped Ramaphosa would heed the agreement signed by  Gwarube and a deputy director-general in the presidency at the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) in late November, when he decides whether to implement sections of the Act held in abeyance for three months.

DA spokesperson Willie Aucamp told the Mail & Guardian the text agreed on in response to a complaint lodged by trade union Solidarity offered a way out of the standoff over the effect of the legislation on language and admissions policies.

“We are waiting to see what happens but we are hoping that the president will take the agreement to heart because we are of the view that this provides a workable solution,” Aucamp said. “If what was agreed at Nedlac is implemented, it will be a win-win situation for all.”

But the presidency has repudiated the agreement, in which Gwarube undertook to advise Ramaphosa that regulations clarifying the legal import of sections 4 and 5 of the Act should be adopted first.

These should, inter alia, define the role of school governing bodies in setting admission and language policy, according to the text of the three-page agreement.

The text was co-signed by Matsietsi Mekoa, the deputy director general for corporate management in the presidency. Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, told the M&G that she had no mandate to do so.

Magwenya also said Gwarube should have consulted the presidency before issuing a statement about the agreement, in which she said she would impress on Ramaphosa that every child had a constitutional right to be taught in their mother tongue where possible.

Gwarube’s office denied that she had not consulted the presidency. 

“The assertion that the ministry did not consult the office of the president before issuing the Nedlac settlement statement is untrue. The presidency was aware of the statement and its general contents in advance,” her spokesperson said.

Magwenya subsequently countered: “We stand by our every word on the matter.”

Aucamp said this meant “the presidency is throwing the deputy director-general under the bus” because he had acted in good faith.

Ramaphosa and Deputy President Paul Mashatile made plain, in separate statements issued a day apart, that the Nedlac process was not a substitute for ongoing negotiations in the coalition clearing house where the 10 parties in the government of national unity seek to resolve disputes.

The president stressed that he would not be beholden to the Nedlac accord when he sets commencement dates for the clauses in question. 

Sources close to the president said the political space to further extend the consultation period over clauses 4 and 5 has been eroded by the extent to which the Bela debate has been politicised.

Opposition to the Act revolves around shifting the power to set language and admissions policies from school governing bodies to provincial political authorities.

Critics of all political persuasions say in its current form the Act invites more of the political meddling that has for decades bedevilled education, a critical developmental marker. Last week, South Africa again ranked last in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).

But trade unions, Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi and the minister in the presidency, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, have cast the criticism as proof of regressive attachment to Afrikaans instruction in schools.

The South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) said swift implementation was vital because section 4 had implications for school admissions for the upcoming academic year. 

“Schools have got to plan around the issues, and then they have got to amend their policies. So if there’s any delay, it is going to impact on the right of learners to learn,” Sadtu general secretary Mugwena Maluleke told the M&G. 

Recent calls to fire Gwarube plainly emanate from ANC factions hostile to the party’s coalition with the DA. Removing her from the portfolio is not on the cards and DA leader John Steenhuisen has warned that if it happened, it would spell the end of the coalition.

But the tone taken by the president and those around him — Ramaphosa warned that his resolve on the legislation “should not be tested” — is also informed by frustration with the ANC’s biggest partner in general, and with Gwarube in particular.

In ANC circles, Gwarube was seen as rudely indifferent to Ramaphosa’s efforts to shield her against Sadtu, which for decades exerted a stranglehold on the education ministry but saw its influence fade with the arrival of a minister not bound by the customs of the past.

Political analyst William Gumede said Gwarube rightly felt no need to be protected from factional interests in the ANC, and Ramaphosa would be wise to ignore them too because the multi-party coalition had given him the freedom to do so.

“ANC political culture is where the president protects you against the factions of the ANC, and the president tries to balance all the factions. In a multi-party coalition, you don’t care because they did not vote for you, they are not your thing. You are there with a mission to deliver and you are going to push back against ANC factions.

“And that is what I think Ramaphosa is struggling with and what ANC leaders are struggling with because they are used in their majority culture to deal with the factions. The non-ANC people are not interested.”

The novel reality of coalition rule meant the ANC must reconsider who it sought to please, Gumede suggested.

“The anti-GNU people are not a majority in the country, they are not even a majority in the ANC. There is no point in serving them. Focus on the country now and ignore the fringe.

“Be the grown-up and lead for the people who want this thing to succeed.”

He added that a list should have been made, almost as soon as the coalition was formed, of all new policies that its fellow partners had rejected and so that these could be reviewed. 

“That is the principle that is missing, and it is missed sadly by a lot of even pro-GNU ANC leaders. They don’t get that.”

Gumede said this included foreign policy, an area where the ANC has refused to entertain the DA’s recent criticism of the demand that Taiwan relocate its liaison office, the government’s ties with Russia and its plans for the G20 presidency.

He added that the election of Donald Trump as US president has made a recalibration of traditional ANC foreign policy all the more pressing because of the economic risks it posed.

“He is going to be South Africa’s biggest foreign policy challenge.

“If the ANC with its foreign policy, which is party-based, past-based policy, carries on as is in relation to the Trump administration, we are done economically as a country.

“So the foreign policy will have to go back to the drawing board, to say now we are all together … we have to come up with foreign policy that focuses on the interests of the country.”

ANC sources in government have vowed this will not happen.

The absence of a formal coalition agreement has made it harder for the DA to demand that its policy input or objections be taken seriously. 

It may have hoped that governance would be guided by the spirit of the hastily agreed statement of intent to form a coalition, but six months later it had learnt that “the details are being muddled by the ANC’s internal politics”, Gumede said.

This meant the same power struggles that brought the country low growth and high unemployment now threatened the GNU. 

It was unlikely that the coalition would collapse at this point, because the ANC lacked the numbers to rule without the DA and would be blamed for the failure of a project that had the support of the majority of voters.

The same blame would attach to the DA if it were to walk away.

DA sources said should the government proceed to implement the Bela Act without concessions to the party’s concerns, it will have to live with it or launch a legal challenge. 

Solidarity said it may institute a rationality review should Ramaphosa implement the Act as is, because it believed that the Constitution enjoined him to consider recommendations from the relevant minister when he exercises his power to proclaim legislation.

“But we are not sitting here wanting to go to court with papers ready, waiting on the court steps for the president on Friday,” Werner Human, the operational head of Solidarity, said

If it were to take that route, it would be on the basis that section 54 of the Act and section 101(2) of the Constitution compels him to take into account advice from the minister when determining the commencement date of sections of the legislation. 

“Where you have a provision that the president must be advised upon the readiness of certain provisions, that is actually a joint exercise with the minister in question,” Human said.

“We believe that he cannot ignore the recommendations from the minister and he cannot ignore the Nedlac agreement in the exercise of his discretion.”