The question of what the government of national unity (GNU) actually is keeps coming up. Is it a coalition, a genuine attempt at national unity? Is it a confidence and supply agreement? Is it a crazy clown car?

The media certainly seems unsettled, buffeted this way and that depending on which briefing they are attending. It doesn’t help that the DA has a far more aggressive media operation. Still, at times there seems to be hyperbolic freak-outs at what might otherwise be considered normal coalition drama.

All this is important as corporates settle down to think what will happen through 2025 and how they deploy capital and make investment decisions.

As is usual in SA and Africa there is too much of a ready bias to ascribe to conspiracy what is generally a cock up. Basically, our bar to label something real drama needs to be quite high; after all, we are dealing with that weird beast called politicians.

Hyperactive new ministers of all stripes have arrived with a broad political plan and are immediately running up against a state system and an ANC (policy/governance) machine that basically doesn’t work. Equally, there is an ANC that isn’t used to negotiating with anyone — not even with each other, as evidenced by how previous administrations operated — and obviously wants to give away as little as possible. As such, every trick in the book will be tried by both sides to get what they want.

This should all be blindingly obvious and not generate hysteria. In the Sunday papers there was an exposition over drama of the extended cabinet meeting last Friday where the National Health Insurance Act (NHI) came up and a meeting of the ANC and Afrikaner organised groups about the Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela) Act.

We saw several usual tricks on display — the positing that something such as Bela would be inevitable (an argument which often comes from the health minister’s mouth too) and that objectors to NHI have failed to raise specific objections.

The latter is verifiably untrue. There’s a lovely little website — Parliamentary Monitoring Group — which holds a record of all the presentations on bills made. A simple search will provide reams of specific objections, clause by clause, laid out by a wide variety of concerned stakeholders. Yet it’s a classic trick that people seem to be ready to fall for. The government throws up the need for “specific” comments and recommendations when they have already been made. That’s why the current attempted negotiations with the government on the matter will come to naught. (Ultimately, court action is all that will work to force internal ANC movement on the issue.)

A theme comes up from previous columns: the idea that previous administrations largely went with the flow from issue to issue, and that’s why a legislative cycle could take an entire five years. (Operation Vulindlela-related reforms were the exception that proved the rule.)

Coalitions are meant to be characterised by deep and challenging negotiations at the start to set a decent foundation for people who are generally not on each other’s Christmas card list, and then also as you go along. There is a misconception that this has happened. It has not.

The GNU statement of intent contains generalities and back in June the negotiations were focused largely on some specific issues such as proportionality (which were then largely thrown out the window in the cabinet appointments). We shouldn’t forget that the GNU statement of intent was the easy part and happened quickly. It was the appointment of the cabinet that took time, in part because the agreement wasn’t specific enough on that.

Since then we haven’t had any other agreements. The formation of the Medium-Term Development Plan (MTDP) now seems to be meant to substitute for that process, layered with a dispute resolution committee, but this isn’t a coalition agreement and doesn’t cover how things should happen.

A coalition cannot work on the hot air of a strategy of trying to outfox and outbrief each other without a deeper agreement. That the MTDP is all that’s on the table remains problematic. So, too, the long timelines — it isn’t to come to cabinet until the lekgotla at the end of January. This is a mad time before the state of the nation address when everyone is buzzing around trying to land things into the speech — not a time for a deep agreement.

The ANC strategy is clear here, and with a short-term lens not unreasonable: to try to create a messy mix of momentum and continuity when it is difficult, given the complexity of the medium-term strategic framework (MTSF) to unpick it on complex things such as NHI and Bela. Such a strategy, however, isn’t sustainable in the medium run.

Put another way: what are the pain points for each party? For the GNU to survive there has to be the pain of compromise on all sides over a variety of issues. This has not happened in any meaningful sense yet. Seeing it happen in the context of the MTDP into January seems far-fetched.

GNU disputes are meant to be dealt with in the new resolution committee. But it’s difficult to fathom what this committee actually is. It has delegates of party leaders in most cases and some party leaders of smaller outfits. It includes non-government parties in the GNU in parliament too. The central question is whether those who are there — and here we really mean Maropene Ramokgopa and Paul Mashatile — have the ability to compromise credibly in the context of that committee while also having to manage a compromise process in the ANC. Both people are theoretically senior enough to do that, but it’s so outside the ANC and the national executive committee’s style that it is tough to imagine.

The DA will have to make similar compromises (as will other parties) though their sense of their internal red lines and a tighter form of governance means this is perhaps slightly less difficult to see than it is with the ANC.

The broad lie of the land on the policy landscape is known. But the issue of the GNU surviving — a big question for investors — is unknown and will come up time and again over the next five years. Again this is why getting the foundations right is so important.

The positives of the GNU and the upside for the country, as well as the pressures on the GNU parties to make it work, are sufficiently great that the consensus jumps to the outcome of “so it will be made to work” and that the necessary compromises will be made. The point, however, is to highlight that there are some serious mechanics and practicalities lurking in this leap argument.

After all, this medium-term budget policy statement might well be quite smooth, with continuity largely the name of the game and a bit of money for education and clawing back some underspend. We don’t expect pressures from the GNU — apart from education, which is a cross-party issue — to be that serious at this point. However, once the MTDP is agreed GNU partners will be champing at the bit for resources.

Let’s not forget that all GNU partners (including the ANC) are believers in a constrained macro-fiscal envelope. The National Treasury will tell them that they can basically do whatever they want if they are happy to raise VAT or increase taxes on the middle class — but that’s clearly not a viable, practical or politically feasible option. As such, whatever one party will argue for as their priority in the MTDP will lead to cuts elsewhere. The same is true for wages and that’s why, ultimately, GNU members are all likely to back a tough line against unions in the next round.

The complexity of the GNU will properly hit home when money more conspicuously enters the equation in mid-2025 and a spending round is conducted with the MTDP in mind. The need for a functioning mechanism of whatever this GNU thing is quite clearly needs to be locked down well before that.

In the meantime we should be careful what we assign to “normal drama” and what is actually important drama for the GNU.

• Peter Attard Montalto leads on political economy, markets and the just energy transition at Krutham, a SA research-led consulting company.