Government of National Unity in South Africa: A Shift in South Africa’s Political Landscape or a Relationship of Political Parties with Mutual Survival for Relevance?

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19564402

Toyin Cotties Adetiba (Department of Political and International Studies, University of Zululand, South Africa)

Primarily, the formulation and implementation of social, economic, and political policies in South Africa has been built around the African National Congress, the political party that led the country to attaining its political freedom in 1994. Following the national election of 2024, where none of the party secure the absolute majority to form a government, the South African political parties have had to form the Government of National Unity with hitherto former opposition political parties. The assertion that in a divided society, the achievement of and sustainability of social, political, and economic stability through a power-sharing pact by political parties is pivotal to the formation of the GNU, built on power-sharing arrangements to foster stability through collaboration. However, with the result of 2024 national election, there is a shift in the political landscape of South Africa with multi-party governance to facilitate cooperative and stable governance. Employing qualitative research method and coalition theory, this paper seeks to answer the question of whether the formation of GNU in South Africa is a shift in its political landscape or a relationship of political parties with mutual survival for relevance. The paper concludes that, though South Africa has had to find solutions to several social, economic, and political questions begging for answers in the polity to achieve some degree of national cohesion to mitigate the challenges of inequality, which requires political stability for policy innovation. However, this work believes that most political parties in the GNU are there to punch up their relevance in the polity.