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The Democratic Alliance (DA) entered the government of national unity (GNU) divided, with a significant faction opposing any move to co-govern alongside the African National Congress (ANC). That resistance was partly rooted in a strategic calculation that allowing the ANC, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), and uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) to form a coalition could expose governance failures and create electoral opportunities for the DA in 2029.  Ultimately the DA leadership overcame that resistance and the GNU was born, but the recent leadership transition in the party has dialled GNU enthusiasm back a bit, raising the prospect of a future GNU break-up.

Part of that initial resistance arose from the view that the ANC is a fundamentally corrupt and unrehabilitatable institution that has no interest in seeing South Africa correct course, but merely wishes to use the DA to enable its continued mismanagement of the country.

Former party leader John Steenhuisen ultimately overrode that resistance and positioned himself as a leading advocate of the GNU. However, that decision created internal strain, with critics arguing that the DA had moved too close to the ANC and was effectively enabling the continuation of its ideological agenda.

Within the DA, a related concern gained traction that the party was achieving little in government, and that its reputation for competent governance risked being diluted by association. This was compounded by a growing divide between those embedded in government structures and those operating outside them within the party.

The leadership transition has now altered that balance.

The new DA leader has opted not to enter the GNU or Cabinet, choosing instead to remain focused on governing Cape Town. This effectively reduces the GNU role within the party to a much downgraded one – a sub-committee of sorts, reporting to a party manager, who in turn reports to the party leader.

At the same time, the DA’s posture has shifted from firm commitment to a more conditional stance. Senior figures have signalled that, under the right circumstances, the party would be prepared to see the GNU collapse and will not, under all circumstances, rush to compromise in its defence.

There is some merit to that. The ANC has treated the DA like a junior partner, and taking a harder and more conditional line on key reforms may be effective in properly balancing the governing relationship. The 2025 VAT hike dispute was a very effective case study of how that might be done and saw the gap between the two parties shrink briefly to just four percentage points.

But key DA ministers have, of their own accord, done very badly in their portfolios, betraying both the DA’s claims to excellence in governance and its policy principles. The Minister of Basic Education has been particularly poor, while the management of the foot-and-mouth pandemic has marked arguably the single greatest economic failure of the unity government. The new DA leadership have not moved to ensure consequences for that and thereby set an example that the party is ruthless about excellence in government – even as it becomes more ambivalent about the merits of continuing in the government.

The extent of that ambivalence must be weighed against an ongoing debate within the ANC itself, where some factions view alignment with the EFF or MK as a more ideologically coherent alternative. The case of the ANC in Gauteng, on which The Common Sense has reported at length, is the most relevant.

Should DA ambivalence meet with that view of alignment, then the GNU is done.

For now, public confidence in the GNU remains strong, and neither major party is likely to risk immediate collapse because of the political fallout that might be triggered. However, unlike the case of the past two years, where new tensions emerge, the willingness to compromise may weaken, raising the prospect that future disputes could test the durability of the arrangement – especially where one side sees the opportunity to blame the other for the break-up.

The economic implications of any break-up would be severe.

A collapse of the GNU would likely trigger sharp currency weakness, a spike in bond yields, and a further deterioration in investor sentiment. At a deeper level, it would narrow the current scope for policy moderation, let alone meaningful reform, reinforcing perceptions that South Africa is drifting further away from a stable, investment-friendly trajectory.