‘We’re opposed to GNU that resembles the one of 1994’ – Shivambu

Shivambu briefed the media Friday afternoon, ahead of the party's Central Elections Task Force and Central Command Team meeting in Sandton, north of Johannesburg.

On Thursday, the African National Congress’s (ANC) leader, Cyril Ramaphosa, announced that it would invite parties represented in the National Assembly to form a government of national unity (GNU).

None of the country’s major political parties managed to win an outright majority in last week’s national and provincial elections, and the ANC, which garnered the highest voter support at 40%, has proposed the GNU as a solution.

The Democratic Alliance remained the second biggest party with just under 22% of the vote, while the EFF dropped to fourth place at 9% after Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto Wesizwe Party took third position with 14% of voter support.

READ MORE: ANC decides on Government of National Unity as way forward

But Shivambu says as far as the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) is concerned, the Democratic Alliance (DA) and, what he calls white minority parties, represent the apartheid system.

He says they will not endorse a government deal that has the same makeup as in 1994, which handed former apartheid leaders key ministerial positions.

“If you were to check the outcomes of that government of national unity of Nelson Mandela, it had FW de Klerk as an executive deputy president, Pik Botha as the minister of minerals and energy, Andre van Niekerk as the minister of agriculture, and even in social development, it had a minister from the apartheid establishment. We don’t want to form any part of a government with representatives of the white colonial and apartheid system.”

The EFF is adamant it will not form part of a government with the DA and Freedom Front Plus as deliberations on the formation of a GNU are set to begin in earnest.

Shivambu says they are not desperate for positions in government or the National Assembly.

“We are not going to do everything in our power so that we are appointed into cabinet and become speakers of Parliament. We are not going to sit alongside the land thieves and people who benefited unlawfully from colonialism and apartheid to constitute the government of South Africa.

“If the ANC wants to choose that route they can go ahead and do what they did in 1994, and we know what the consequences are what happened in 1994. Black people still stay in the same spaces they did when apartheid segregated black people to inferior spaces, racism and poverty are still a lived reality of this government of national unity.”

He adds that the main objective of the GNU should be to improve the lives of black people, and the land question should be at the centre of what unites all parties.

“It must be an agenda to free education, to protect workers’ rights and interest to enforce minimum wages in all the sectors where they are applicable…

“Whoever is going to constitute government should have an appreciation for what we stand for. There are parties who say they will never work with the EFF.”

The DA has previously said it is not willing to collaborate with the EFF from as far back as the 2021 local government elections.

The party centred its recent election campaign around preventing what they described as the “doomsday coalition” of the ANC and EFF in national government.

Shivambu says they are aware that a government must be formed within 14 days of the official announcement of the election result, they are amenable to some areas on policies that can be finalised at a later stage, but they will not back down the reversal of the legacy and remnants of colonialism and apartheid.

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