Maroc - dailynews.co.za - News - 04/Aug 07:31

DA can walk away, ANC’s Godlimpi says they won’t beg any party in GNU

Johannesburg - Acting ANC spokesperson Zuko Godlimpi has dared the Democratic Alliance (DA) to exit the Government of National Unity (GNU) or be disciplined because the unity is structured in their favour.“We won’t beg any party including the DA, we structured the GNU in a way that if they want to walk, they can walk,” he said.But he said if indeed the DA was committed to the idea of a common stabilisation programme of the country’s political system, they would not pull out of GNU.Godlimpi was responding to the DA’s Federal chairperson Helen Zille that the two parties were in a coalition government.He said the GNU as it stands, was the most strategic manoeuvre by the ANC to turn an electoral seer back into a strategic advantage.On Thursday, IOL reported that Zille said there was no such thing as GNU.In a video clip that has gone viral on social media, Zille explains that both parties entered into a coalition “from the beginning”.“President Cyril Ramaphosa came up with this notion of a Government of National Unity, which he thought would be a better way of selling the concept of a coalition to his own party,” she said.Godlimpi accused Zille of feeding the public with wrong information about the GNU and also undermined the political parties involved.“Don’t listen to someone who goes to podcasts and media interviews and says things that do not exist, undermines all parties,” he said.In addition, he said no party could match in terms of intellectual, ideological, political, and organisation.“The difference is that some of them are given a disproportionate amount of airtime on the South African megaphone and the illusion is that they are thinking and speaking alone. It is not true,” he said.Meanwhile, ANC’s Head of Political Education David Makhura added that had this been a coalition, the DA would have demanded more than they did.President Cyril Ramaphosa is expected to deliver the opening address of the ANC NEC Lekgotla on Sunday (today) at Boksburg as well.kamogelo.moichela@iol.co.zaIOL Politics