African National Congress (ANC) President Cyril Ramaphosa (C) gestures after being declared president after MPs voted during the first session of the New South African Parliament in Cape Town on June 14, 2024.
Wikus De Wet | Episode | Getty Images
The African National Congress and its main rival, the white-led, pro-business Democratic Alliance, agreed on Friday to work together in South Africa's new national unity government, a step change after three decades of ANC rule.
The deal was once unthinkable and enabled President Cyril Ramaphosa to win a second term. He was re-elected by lawmakers with 283 votes.
The agreement between two sharply hostile parties is the most momentous political change in South Africa since Nelson Mandela led the ANC to victory in the 1994 elections that marked the end of apartheid.
“It will once again be a privilege and a pleasure to serve this great nation (as) president,” the 71-year-old leader said in a speech to parliament, describing the incoming government as an era of hope and inclusiveness.
“The fact that a number of opposing parties… have decided to work together to achieve this result has given a new birth and a new era to our country,” he said.
The ANC lost its majority for the first time in the May 29 elections and spent two weeks in talks with other parties, which went to the extreme on Friday morning as the new parliament met in Cape Town.
“Today is a historic day for our country,” said DA leader John Steenhuisen. “And I think this is the beginning of a new chapter… where we put our country,… its interests and its future first.”
The National Assembly had previously elected a DA lawmaker as deputy speaker, after choosing an ANC politician as speaker – the first concrete example of power-sharing between the two parties.
Long seen as unbeatable in national elections, the ANC has lost support in recent years as voters grew tired of persistently high levels of poverty, inequality and crime, rolling power cuts and corruption in the party ranks.
Watershed moment
The DA's entry into the national government is a turning point for a country still coming to terms with the legacy of racist colonial and apartheid regimes.
The party wants to scrap some of the ANC's Black empowerment programs because they have not worked and have mainly benefited a politically connected elite. It says good governance and a strong economy would benefit all South Africans.
For this reason, some ANC politicians have expressed hostility to the DA's presence in government. The far-left Economic Freedom Fighters, who won almost 10% of the vote, meanwhile accused them of representing the interests of the privileged white minority – an accusation the DA strongly disputes.
Democratic Alliance (DA) Leader John Steenhuisen casts his vote for Deputy Speaker during the 7th Session of the South African Parliament on June 14, 2024 at the Cape Town Convention Center in Cape Town, South Africa.
Peranders Pettersson | Getty Images News | Getty Images
“We do not agree with this marriage of convenience to consolidate white monopolistic power over the economy and the means of production,” EFF leader Julius Malema said in a speech in parliament after Ramaphosa's election.
“We refuse to sell out.”
Others took a less bleak view of the new racial dynamics.
“The ANC also failed. They need a partner so they can get back up. DA is mainly made up of white people so if they come together we can have more power and maybe a lot can change and even jobs can be created,” Bongani Msibi, 38, a street vendor in Soweto, told Reuters TV earlier in the day .
Helen Zille, herself 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 significant aspect of this historic agreement,” she said in a post on X criticizing some headlines.
Investors welcome deal
Two smaller parties, the socially conservative Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the right-wing Patriotic Alliance, will also participate in the unity government.
The ANC won 159 of the 400 seats in the National Assembly, while the DA got 87. The populist uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) party led by former president Jacob Zuma has 58 seats, the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters 39 and the Inkatha Freedom Party 17. .
The inclusion of the IFP, with its ethnic Zulu base, could soften the DA pill for ANC voters. The Patriotic Alliance receives its support from the colored (mixed race) community.
A statement of intent from the national unity government was circulated to party negotiators by the ANC's Mbalula.
The “basic minimum program of priorities” outlined in the document, according to Reuters, included rapid, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, the promotion of fixed asset investment, job creation, land reforms, infrastructure development, structural reforms and fiscal sustainability.
London-based research firm Capital Economics said investors favored a coalition involving the ANC and DA because there was expected to be policy continuity or an acceleration of reforms – and because the EFF and MK – both of which want to nationalize banks and private lands. – are excluded from policy making.
Zuma's MK came third in the election but claimed it had been robbed of victory by vote fraud and boycotted the new parliament. On Friday, an IFP official was elected premier of Zuma's stronghold, KwaZulu-Natal province, with the support of the DA, ANC and another party, defeating the MK candidate.
Excluding the MK from the province's government, even though it won the largest number of votes with 45%, could cause serious problems in KwaZulu-Natal, where hundreds of people have been killed in violence in 2021.
