Prof Joseph Sekhampu
Chief Director of the NWU Business School
By Prof. Joseph Sekhampu, director of the NWU Business School.
The Government of National Unity has now settled into the political landscape and is no longer an experiment, but a lived reality. Its existence invites a deeper reflection on what it reveals about the state of our democracy and the enduring instinct for survival. Far from signalling a rupture, the ANC’s participation in the GNU may represent a familiar trend in our political history, one in which power yields just enough to preserve itself. What began as an act of accommodation has become a study in continuity and shows how institutions adapt to new conditions without transforming their essence. The question that remains is whether the GNU serves as a bridge to renewal or as a careful continuation of the same political logic that has long defined the South African reality.
The ANC has never been a conventional party. It is a broad ecosystem of legitimacy and influence that binds the state, society, and liberation memory together into a single governing identity. Its authority has always depended as much on narrative as on numbers, and rests on the belief that it embodies the moral centre of the nation. The GNU does not dismantle that claim; it rearticulates it in new form.
Political theorists describe this as adaptive hegemony. When a dominant movement facing erosion of its base preserves influence not through control but through accommodation. In this sense, the ANC’s embrace of the GNU is not a reluctant surrender but a structural adaptation. It has accepted that in a post-majority democracy, power must be shared in appearance but maintained in effect.
The GNU emerges not as a bold experiment, but as the instinctive adjustment to preserve equilibrium. Power, long shaped by the habits and hierarchies of the ruling party, is redistributed to prevent rupture. Shared governance becomes a mechanism through which blame is diffused, fatigue is managed, and legitimacy renewed. This is not the outcome of deliberate design, but rather the quiet logic of a political order that adapts to preserve itself through accommodation. The GNU restores a sense of moral order without requiring transformation, and allows the governing structure to appear responsive while remaining fundamentally unchanged. It functions less as a political breakthrough than as a reflex of survival in a system that bends just enough to keep itself intact while ensuring the centre holds.
The recent GNU leadership retreat at the Cradle of Humankind revealed how this dynamic plays out in practice. The gathering projected an image of collective resolve and shared purpose, yet beneath the language of unity lay the steady hand of ANC stewardship. The scene captured a deeper truth about South African politics: that even with a weakened majority, the ANC remains the gravitational centre around which others orbit. The GNU thus functions less as a rupture and more as a reconfiguration of the same order.
There are precedents for this trend. Italy’s Christian Democrats ruled for half a century by folding rivals into endless coalitions that spread responsibility but preserved influence. Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party repeatedly lost majorities but re-emerged as the indispensable centre of governance. In both cases, adaptation replaced victory. South Africa’s GNU fits this global script of managed decline: pluralism in form, continuity in substance.
Adaptation, while it allows political systems to endure, does not in itself bring renewal or transformation. When power is dispersed too widely, accountability weakens, and leadership loses its authority. What begins as inclusion can settle into inertia, where scrutiny fades and inefficiency hides behind the language of consensus. The GNU risks becoming a structure that sustains stability without progress, broad enough to survive, but constrained from acting with purpose.
However, this moment may still be part of South Africa’s democratic learning curve. Although stretched, the country’s institutions have shown the capacity to absorb uncertainty and resist collapse. The Government of National Unity may not signal decline, but rather a pause between eras. It is a moment for the nation to face its own reflection as a weary, adaptive, and yet resilient democracy. In that reflection, the ANC remains both the author and subject of the story, still editing the script long after the audience thought the play had ended.
