African National Congress (ANC) President Cyril Ramaphosa gestures after members of parliament voted to announce his inauguration during the first meeting of the new South African Parliament in Cape Town on June 14, 2024 .
Wikus De Wet | Wikus De Wet TV series | Getty Images
The African National Congress and its biggest rival, the white-led pro-business Democratic Alliance, agreed on Friday to cooperate in South Africa’s new national unity government, a major change after 30 years of ANC rule.
The deal, once unthinkable, allowed President Cyril Ramaphosa to win a second term. He was re-elected with 283 votes.
The agreement between the two sharply opposed parties is the most significant political shift in South Africa since Nelson Mandela led the African National Congress (ANC) to victory in the 1994 elections that marked the end of apartheid.
“As president, it will be an honor and a privilege to serve this great country again,” the 71-year-old leader said in a speech in parliament, describing the upcoming administration as an era of hope and inclusion.
“A number of opposing political parties… decided to work together to achieve this outcome, which brings new life, a new era to our country,” he said.
The ANC lost its majority for the first time in the May 29 election and spent two weeks negotiating with other parties until the new parliament convened in Cape Town on Friday morning.
“Today is a historic day for our country,” DA leader John Steenhuisen said. “I think this is the beginning of a new chapter… We put our country,… its interests and its future first.”
The National Assembly earlier elected a Democratic Alliance MP as deputy speaker after choosing an ANC politician as speaker – the first concrete instance of power-sharing between the two parties.
The ANC, long seen as invincible in national elections, has lost support in recent years as voters express concern over persistently high poverty, inequality and crime rates, recurring power outages and corruption within the party. Feeling bored.
watershed moment
The DA’s entry into national government is a watershed moment for a country still dealing with the legacy of racist colonial and apartheid regimes.
The party wants to scrap some of the ANC’s black empowerment programs, saying they are ineffective and mainly benefit politically connected elites. Good governance and a strong economy will benefit all South Africans, the report said.
As a result, some ANC politicians have expressed hostility to the DA’s presence in government. The far-left Economic Freedom Fighters, which received nearly 10% of the vote, also accused the group of representing the interests of a privileged white minority, a charge the district attorney strongly disputed.
Democratic Alliance (DA) leader John Steenhuisen votes for Deputy Speaker during the seventh session of the South African Parliament at the Convention Center in Cape Town, South Africa, June 14, 2024.
Anders Pettersson | Getty Images News | Getty Images
After Ramaphosa was elected, EFF leader Julius Malema said in a speech in parliament: “We do not agree with this marriage of convenience to consolidate the white man’s monopoly on the economy and the means of production.”
“We refuse to sell.”
Others take a less pessimistic view of the new racial dynamics.
“The ANC failed too. They need a partner so they can rise again. The DA is mostly white so if they unite we can have more power and maybe a lot of things can be changed and even jobs can be created ,” Bongani Msibi, 38, a street vendor in Soweto, told Reuters TV earlier in the day.
Helen Zille, a senior prosecutor for the party’s former leader, said Steenhuisen’s skin color was irrelevant.
“The DA leader’s melanin quotient is the least important aspect of this historic deal,” she said in a post on X criticizing some media headlines.
Investors welcome deal
Two smaller parties, the socially conservative Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the right-wing Patriotic Union, will also participate in the coalition government.
The ANC won 159 of the 400 seats in the National Assembly, while the Democratic Alliance won 87 seats. The Economic Freedom Fighters party won 39 seats and the Inkatha Freedom Party won 17 seats.
The addition of the IFP, which is based on its Zulu ethnic group, could help bring more development aid to ANC voters. The Patriotic Union is supported by the Colored (mixed-race) community.
The ANC’s Mbalula circulated a statement of intent for a national unity government to party negotiators.
The “basic minimum priority plan” outlined in the document, seen by Reuters, includes rapid, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, promotion of fixed capital investment, job creation, land reform, infrastructure development, structural reforms and fiscal sustainability.
London-based research firm Capital Economics said investors favored a coalition of the ANC and DA as policy continuity or accelerated reforms were expected, and both Front Europe and the People’s Bank wanted to nationalize banks and private land – Being excluded from policy making.
Zuma’s National Party came third in the election but claimed the party was robbed of victory by fraud and boycotted the new parliament. A Liberal Party official, backed by the Democratic Alliance, the African National Congress and other parties, was elected premier of Zuma’s stronghold of KwaZulu-Natal on Friday, defeating the People’s Party candidate.
Excluding MK from the provincial government could cause serious trouble in KwaZulu-Natal, where hundreds of people were killed in violence in 2021, despite MK winning a 45% majority of the vote.
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