Mokonyane: DA 'must be watched' as GNU ties reviewed

The ANC has fired its clearest warning yet that its marriage of convenience with the DA in the Government of National Unity is on life support.

ANC deputy secretary-general Nomvula Mokonyane on Thursday rubber-stamped her boss Fikile Mbalula's call for a full review of the party's relationship with the DA, declaring that the DA is a party the ANC "must watch."

It was not a slip of the tongue. It was a deliberate, public hardening of the ANC's line, delivered at the party's own results briefing as early election numbers showed the ANC bleeding support and scrambling for coalition options.

Mokonyane was asked directly whether the ANC had discussed Mbalula's demand to review its relationship with the DA. She did not dodge. She doubled down.

"Nothing is sacrosanct. The relationship with the DA is the same as the relationship we have with the Freedom Front Plus. And the conduct, especially at a time when we wanted to ensure that our people in South Africa are not disenfranchised, and you go and stand out there and say they have no right," Mokonyane said.

"The courts, and particularly the Constitutional Court, protected the rights of South Africans. So these are the people we must watch, and these are the people that, when you relate with them, you must know that ordinarily they don't stand for what you stand for," she said.

In ANC language, that is as close as it gets to a declaration of no confidence in a coalition partner without formally walking out of the GNU.

Mokonyane's intervention matters because it moves Mbalula's position from one man's frustration to official party doctrine.

Mbalula had spoken out after the Constitutional Court battle over the ANC's candidates. Now his deputy has publicly owned that position, signalling that the top leadership is aligned.

The trigger was the ANC's near-disaster over its candidate lists.

In October, the Constitutional Court ordered that 181 ANC candidates be reinstated on the ballot. They had been excluded after the party failed to click the final submission button on the IEC's online portal, a technical blunder that threatened to disenfranchise ANC voters in key wards.

The DA opposed the ANC's appeal in both the Electoral Court and the Constitutional Court, arguing that the rules must apply equally to all parties.

After the ruling, Mbalula said the ANC must review the DA's place in the GNU. The DA responded that it was not in the GNU to get along, and would defend the equal application of the law.

Mokonyane has now reframed that legal fight as a moral and political betrayal. In her telling, the DA did not defend the law, it tried to deny South Africans their right to vote for the party of their choice, and it did so at the ANC's moment of maximum vulnerability.

That framing is politically potent inside the ANC. It allows the leadership to cast the DA not as a principled partner, but as an opportunistic rival that used the courts to weaken the ANC while sitting in Cabinet with it.

Mokonyane was careful, however, not to announce a break. She said ANC structures would only discuss the results once counting was complete, insisting the party would not rush into a decision on incomplete numbers.

"We're meeting every day. We met even today. Our work continues. The results are yet to be concluded, so we can't go with a half-baked package to any structure. The National Elections Team will put together a report and take it through the SGO for the officials and the working committee to present before the NWC, and we get a mandate from there," she said.

That process talk is standard ANC procedure, but it also buys time. The ANC is still waiting to see just how badly it has performed in Gauteng's metros, where ActionSA has emerged as kingmaker, and in KwaZulu-Natal, where the MK Party is surging.

On coalitions, Mokonyane kept the door wide open, saying the ANC was open to working with any party that shared its manifesto priorities.

"It is premature for us to start talking, because the ANC is open to talk to everyone and work with everyone, as long as we ensure stability, and as long as we ensure that the six pillars contained in our manifesto are also reflected in what that political party or those independents stand for," Mokonyane said.

She said this included the SACP, which contested the elections on its own.

"The SACP will be one of those parties we are open to engage with, because it has contested elections. We didn't go to elections as an alliance," she said.