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GOOD joined the Government of National Unity after the May election did not produce an outright winner because if South Africa doesn’t find common purpose to transform the lingering apartheid landscape it is in for a period of prolonged division and turbulence.

The only available avenue to avoid this turbulence is for government to demonstrate new resolve to address profound abnormalities in our society: Inequality, poverty, and the full suite of social, economic, spatial and environmental injustices that the democracy inherited 30 years ago.

In addressing these matters, it will bring the picture in the Constitution, of a non-racial country of hope for all, to life. Failure to do so, however, will lead to the cliffs of social discontent and an intensification of the divisive identity politics that characterized the 29 May election.

The one thing that all political parties (including those representing minorities) should take from the election results was that the overwhelming majority of South Africans yearn for a government that better implements programmes to transform the 1994 landscape and improve the quality of their lives.

While 29 May will go down as a day of historic political realignment, the process of realignment is, in fact, just beginning.

The ability of the GNU to create conditions for economic growth, while simultaneously persuading millions of struggling South Africans that it has their backs, and is taking appropriate steps to address their marginalization, will be a key determinant of the direction in which the country heads next.

While South Africa’s political realignment is being characterized as a looming showdown between constitutionalists and anti-constitutionalists, the Constitution is not responsible for the country’s management – politicians and bureaucrats are.

Progress in the post-apartheid state has been severely constrained by the former ruling party’s inabilities to implement constitutional provisions intended to narrow the gaps in quality of life, and achieve a more equal and just society.

The former official opposition, conversely, has been highly successful in using those constitutional provisions that protect minority rights.

Now these former foes are partners in a school of fish of different species and temperaments that the President must cajole to swim in one direction.

GOOD remains steadfast in its values and commitment to contribute to the unfinished business of creating a fair and sustainable country for all – a country freed of the burdens of unaddressed history.

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Issued by Brett Herron, GOOD Secretary-General