Tensions are running high once again in the fragile government of national unity. Sadly, it is not for the last time – even though it is clear to all the main parties involved that they need each other. 

The cause of the strained relations this time round is President Cyril Ramaphosa’s signing of the Expropriation Bill into law. 

Under normal circumstances, the president’s assenting to the piece of legislation should have caused no controversy as the issue was debated in detail on various platforms before it was voted on by the National Assembly last year. 

But we are now in a new normal – a South Africa where no single political party enjoys enough support from the electorate to be able to steer the country in one direction or another alone. 

Opposition parties who had lost the debate in parliament during the previous term believe that the changed political environment – which saw the ANC falling to gain 40% of the seats in the National Assembly – should translate into what they consider to be contentious pieces of legislation, the Bela Act, the National Health Insurance Act and the Expropriation Act being renegotiated. 

But that is not how Ramaphosa and the ANC see things. As far as they are concerned, once the pieces of legislation were passed by parliament – even if it was the previous one – the president had no reason not to assent to them unless they had been deemed to be unconstitutional by the courts. 

At the heart of it all is the difficult position the ANC, the DA and other members of the GNU find themselves in the aftermath of last year’s May 29 elections.

It is clear to all of them that, if the country is to work over the next four years, they need to work with one another. Yet, especially for the ANC and the DA, each party runs the risk of alienating key constituencies within its ranks if it is seen to be “giving in too much” to the other side. 

Hence even though the Expropriation Act is largely a procedural legislation whose main intention is to describe procedures to be followed by national and provincial governments when expropriating land in the public interest, the ANC and its ministers are trumpeting it as “a progressive legislation” that will finally bring back the land to the dispossessed. It will not. 

The DA and its fellow travellers, on the other hand, are making statements that suggest that the legislation could even lead to Zimbabwean-style land grabs by the state. Again, it will not. 

While all of this rhetoric is understandable in the context of political parties trying not to lose their constituencies ahead of next year’s local government elections, electoral considerations should not make them lose sight of the mission – which is to ensure that the country has a stable government. 

Both the ANC and the DA say that keeping the GNU intact is important to them. They should act like they mean it.