How are Governments made?

They say you should never visit a meat processing plant if you like sausages. Watching the process might just put you off your favourite food.

I wonder if governments are like that. Normally a government is put together behind party factory walls, where the ruling party balances its interests in hidden negotiations.

But in South Africa’s 2024 election there was no clear majority. The Government needed to be formed between parties, not merely inside the winning party. It needed to be formed through unusual coalitions midwifed in awkward negotiations.

The effect of this was to remove the usual shroud of secrecy. Or at least to move it to venues like the Inanda club where the information could leak out just a little more easily. Journalists close to the fire could listen in. They could speak to everyone involved. And, as conduits for leaks, they could become participants.

Mandy Wiener’s “The Deal” is an extraordinary all-access pass into the negotiations that created the Government of National Unity. It is a wonderful piece of expositional journalism. Wiener’s close relationships across political lines meant that she was there in the thick of it. She could observe how the players reacted from the moment the failed majority materialised. She could document meetings and discussions and body language. And she could hear it from both sides, exposing the vastly different understandings of what was happening in any one meeting.

She presents the tale without editorial or judgement, allowing us to build our own picture of the players and the game. She leaves us as the reader to form our own judgement, to form our own favourites and to identify our own villains

And what does the look behind the curtain reveal?

It’s pretty terrifying. One comes away from this book realising that there was a small group of individuals bumbling in the dark, trying to find a solution to a situation they had never encountered before, carrying enormous baggage, full of misunderstandings of each other, and playing for enormous stakes. I suddenly realised just how miraculous the outcome was, and how easily it could have been very very different.

There are some wonderful glimpses of dynamics in the negotiating rooms. The gentle dance as the parties felt each other out. The way different parties try to organise themselves. Some, like the DA, are very formal in terms of process. Some, like the PA, are very informal but no less strategic.

The ANC comes across as surprisingly self satisfied. It is delighted at its idea of a GNU, not (gasp) a coalition. It is riven by internal politics that look at any moment like they might topple Ramaphosa as he tries to navigate away from the EFF and towards the DA knowing that to do so too obviously will put him at grave risk. It does also appear that the ANC were just better at negotiating, perhaps a skill that they honed in trade union battles. But the air of gloatiness that infects Ramaphosa’s attitude at the conclusion, his probably correct assumption that he had outnegotiated the DA, made me angry and had me shouting at my book “Stop treating my country like a game!”

It is fascinating to get an insight into the operating culture of the parties. For all the careful process of the DA, the really interesting dynamic to watch is the structural tension that is created between Tony Leon, Ryan Coetzee and Helen Zille. There seems to be a quite magical type of intellectual warfare that only those with deep respect for each other can have. The Lord protect a mortal that gets caught in the cross fire. But what a stunning truth finding culture to be able to find a path through robust wrangling. And, oh how dangerous, when it means that you miss the subtleties of your adversaries approach.

It is a remarkable feature of the negotiations just how badly the ANC and the DA were misinterpreting each other. There seems to be not nearly enough effort to understand the nuances and fundamentally different approaches. And a rushed negotiation is too late to start this. There would clearly be great benefit for the major political parties to develop better working models of their foes. All of the major parties seem blind to the importance of really working hard to understand one’s negotiating partner’s interests (See William Ury’s brilliant “POSSIBLE” for the power of doing this).

Many of the political parties seemed trapped in adversarial modes, perhaps battle hardened from years of opposing each other, that make it harder to see the opportunities as they arise. And there is no shortage of prejudice seeping through. A number of senior politicians seem to think it is perfectly acceptable to refer to Helen Zille as “The Madam”. This just seems outrageous to me. So clearly an ad hominem attack to try and diminish an adversary.

The politician that comes off best in this book is Gayton McKenzie. He has his eyes up. He is clear about what the PA wants, and they have a plan to get it. He is better at reading the changing winds than any of the other players and adjusts his approach quickly and fundamentally. He then uses humour and shrewdness, to overperform in terms of achieving a good outcome for himself and the PA. The person with the best story wins!

I had underrated the importance of the IFP. It is their inclusion which mitigates the ‘sell out’ accusation and turns an ANC/ DA coalition into something that can be framed as a GNU where ‘all are welcome’ but some choose not to participate. If they had not chosen to join, the accusations of the EFF that the GNU was designed so that they would not be able to stomach it, may have attracted more attention.

So how did our GNU players do? On balance I think we got a pretty good outcome. We were playing a game for which the rules were invented 30 years before in the hope they would never be used. Each player was discovering the game on the field. And the clock was relentless. We should go back and find the person that thought 14 days were enough! We need more time!

So in the end we came off pretty well. Of course it could have been better. But, man oh man, it could have very easily been way worse.

I have visited meat processing plants, and I still love sausages. And If anything, this book makes me want to be more engaged in politics not less.

Happy reading!

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