The GNU Is Losing Its Greatest Asset: Public Confidence

By Themba Khumalo

The political honeymoon is over. The cold light of day has exposed a much harsher reality for South Africa’s governing coalition.

When the Government of National Unity (GNU) was forged in mid-2024, it was hailed as a historic reset — a pragmatic alliance capable of steering the country away from fiscal disaster and social decay.

For a brief period, stretching through late 2024 and into early 2025, public sentiment rose on a wave of genuine hope. Citizens dared to believe that bringing former adversaries under one executive roof might finally break the paralysis that had settled over the country for years.

That window has now slammed shut.

The latest tracking questions conducted by The Common Sense and the Social Research Foundation provide a sobering measure of just how far that early optimism has faded. The figures reveal an electorate defined not by renewed confidence, but by stagnant disillusionment.

Just twenty-one per cent of registered voters say their personal circumstances have improved. Forty-four per cent say that absolutely nothing has changed, while thirty-two per cent say their daily lives have deteriorated.

The great expectation that a new coalition arrangement would somehow translate into electricity in the sockets, food on the table and safety in the streets has collided with reality.

And reality is unimpressed.

Across the country, the prevailing verdict is not outrage so much as something perhaps more dangerous for a government: weary resignation.

Life, under the collective leadership of the GNU, remains much as it was before.

A Universal Verdict Across Demographic Lines

What makes these findings particularly alarming for the grand coalition is their remarkable consistency across demographic lines. There is no constituency in which the government can point to a convincing material breakthrough.

Among Black respondents, only twenty-four per cent say they are better off, compared with thirty-one per cent who say their circumstances have worsened. The picture is even bleaker among minority communities. Among Coloured respondents, a paltry sixteen per cent feel better off, while forty-one per cent say their lives have deteriorated. Indian respondents split thirteen per cent better against forty-five per cent worse.

Even among White respondents, where twenty-eight per cent report deterioration, a meagre seven per cent see any improvement.

Across every cohort, the plurality answer is essentially the same: nothing has changed.

That is perhaps the most damning finding of all.

The political class may be absorbed in parliamentary soundbites, coalition negotiations and the daily theatre of governance, but much of the electorate remains trapped in the same holding pattern it occupied before the GNU arrived.

As Frans Cronje, political analyst, economist and scenario planner, and chairman of the Social Research Foundation (SRF), observes, this represents a profound shift from the elevated expectations that buoyed the coalition during its early months.

Voters initially gave the multiparty cabinet the benefit of the doubt. They allowed ministers time to settle into their portfolios and accepted that a government assembled from political adversaries would need time to find its feet.

That patience is now evaporating.

The reason is brutally simple: macroeconomic adjustments and ministerial roadshows do not pay the grocery bill.

An economy growing at around one per cent cannot create jobs at anything approaching the scale required, nor can it lift millions of people out of structural poverty.

The Mirage of Governance Without Growth

The central mistake of the GNU has been to confuse political compromise with policy execution.

Forming a coalition is the beginning of governance, not its achievement. It sets the stage; it is not the performance.

Yet while cabinet ministers have spent the past two years negotiating portfolios, publishing policy green papers and managing the friction inherent in an uneasy political alliance, ordinary working families have watched their purchasing power erode under high interest rates and relentless cost-of-living pressures.

Political stability has value. Administrative goodwill has value. A more stable power grid has value.

But none of these can carry a government indefinitely if people cannot find work, businesses cannot expand, and households cannot make ends meet.

When freight rail networks remain clogged, municipal infrastructure continues to deteriorate, and red tape suffocates small enterprises, the broader economy remains stuck in second gear. The public did not give the coalition a mandate to demonstrate that rival political parties could sit around the same Cabinet table without shouting at one another.

It gave them a mandate to deliver.

That distinction matters.

A government that cannot move the needle on unemployment will eventually inherit the frustration of an electorate that has grown tired of being asked to admire incremental progress while its own circumstances remain stubbornly unchanged.

Practical Action to Save the Coalition Project

If the leaders of the GNU intend to rescue their grand experiment from political oblivion, they must abandon cosmetic rhetoric and move with a sense of urgency.

First, the coalition must concentrate its energy on radical economic growth. A growth trajectory of around one per cent is not simply inadequate; it is corrosive to public trust.

Cabinet must sweep aside the structural bottlenecks strangling the logistics network, overhaul the management of the state-owned rail and port infrastructure, and bring back the skills, experience and operational discipline needed to restore these vital arteries of the economy to working order.

Second, the executive must establish an emergency operational unit focused relentlessly on municipal service delivery. National strategic plans mean little to a family whose water has been cut off for days, or to a neighbourhood where basic services are collapsing, and crime is unchecked.

Restoring basic administrative competence at the local level would build considerably more credibility than another grand legislative announcement.

Third, the coalition must communicate clear, measurable short-term goals. Instead of promising transformation somewhere on a distant five-year horizon, ministers should set three-month and six-month targets: specific numbers of apprenticeships created, kilometres of roads repaired, water leaks sealed and other tangible improvements that citizens can see and measure.

And then they must be held publicly accountable when those targets are missed.

Because the electorate is not asking for another performance of political optimism. It is asking for evidence that the country is moving.

The Sand Is Running Out

Time is the one commodity the Government of National Unity does not possess in abundance.

With local government elections drawing closer, voters are preparing to pass their own verdict at the ballot box.

When three-quarters of the country believes that life has either ground to a halt or become worse, the political landscape becomes increasingly volatile. Disillusioned citizens do not remain passive indefinitely. They turn towards populist rhetoric. They lose faith in institutions. They disengage from elections. And, eventually, they begin to conclude that the political system itself has nothing left to offer them.

The GNU was given something South African governments rarely receive: a genuine second chance at public confidence.

It was given a rare window to demonstrate that political cooperation could produce material improvement. That window is closing.

If its leaders cannot translate political consensus into visible jobs, functioning services and rising living standards in the months ahead, the frustration now accumulating across the country will eventually wash the coalition away.

The hourglass is almost empty.

And history is unlikely to be kind to a government that mistook the ability to keep itself together for the ability to move a country forward.