Anglican Archbishop Thabo Makgoba has claimed officials are prioritizing "political one-upmanship" at the expense of resolving national issues

Anglican Archbishop Thabo Makgoba used his Easter sermon to not only preach about the meaning of significance of the weekend, but he also warned that Government of National Unit (GNU) 'grandstanding' threatens to create a 'crisis of confidence' in democracy, unless political parties learn to accept one another's legitimacy.

Delivering his annual sermon at St George's Cathedral in Cape Town, Makgoba also urged that the "national dialogue" being planned by the presidency needs to be able to act independently, without being dictated to by politicians.

"In South Africa, it is a time during which the credibility and commitment to good governance of our political parties is seriously open to question," he told the congregation.

"Last week leaders of the South African Council of Churches met with President Ramaphosa and members of his Cabinet, where we registered our protest at the way in which members of the GNU are engaging in grandstanding and political one-upmanship at the expense of resolving the urgent challenges our nation faces.

"For my part, I am concerned that unless our politicians stop playing these dangerous games and develop a proper respect for the legitimacy of their partners in the administration, the very concept of democratic governance in South Africa is headed for a crisis of confidence," Makgoba said.

He added that a section of the African National Congress (ANC) leadership finds it difficult to accept that they no longer enjoy the support of the majority of the electorate, "and still behave as if they alone enjoy legitimacy".

"The Democratic Party (DA) sometimes behaves as if its electoral support entitles it just to override the views of those who represented a far bigger proportion of the electorate in the last election. And at municipal level especially, we see small minority parties exercising far more power than their legitimacy entitles them to."

READ MORE: South Africa lauds progress in talks on VAT hikes

Makgoba said thirty years into democracy, the legitimacy of every party elected to Parliament needs to be respected, and no party should assume a legitimacy greater than their strength at the ballot box gives them.

He also said success for the national dialogue depended on "the process becoming everyone's business, not just the government's".

"...It is critical for the credibility of the dialogue for it to be free from manipulation by political and economic elites.

"To avoid that happening, the President's proposed Advisory Panel of Eminent Persons and the dialogue's steering committee need to be able to act independently, without being dictated to by politicians. The relevance of the dialogue will depend on how representative its deliberations are of the full spectrum of South African society," Makgoba said.

"We will establish true justice in South Africa only if we fulfill the promises of our Constitution by working together for the common good. If we fail to show that democracy can improve the lives of our people, we run the risk of going the way of those countries in the so-called developed world which are threatening to slide downwards into populist autocracies."

First published by IOL