Cape Town: South Africa’s newly elected parliament met on Friday and is expected to re-elect President Cyril Ramaphosa to form an unprecedented coalition government.
African National Congress leaders called for a national unity government after losing their absolute majority in last month’s general election, but the two main left-wing parties rejected the deal.
According to ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula, the government will be “pulled to the centre”, supported by the right-wing Democratic Alliance (DA), the Zulu Nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and several smaller parties.
“We have made progress on the general agreement that we must work together,” Mbalula told a press conference in Cape Town, stressing that the radical left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) refused to join the so-called unity government.
Former president Jacob Zuma’s new party, uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), disputed the May 29 election results and warned it would boycott Friday’s meeting of the 400-member assembly. Mbalula said the ANC was talking to MK but there was no agreement yet.
Ramaphosa is now expected to get a secret ballot in MPs to confirm his re-election, but talks on a written coalition agreement that can be signed by the parties are going down to the wire.
“At 2:00 this morning we thought we had an agreement and a final agreement, but there were some problems this morning and they are trying to resolve them,” said Helen Zille, chairwoman of the DA’s national board. SABC Public Television.
“There is still one great verse. I hope we can get it through the line.”
If Ramaphosa is re-elected, he will be sworn in next week in Pretoria to launch his new cabinet.
“The ANC comes under the guise of a national unity government, but in reality it is not,” Hlengiwe Ndlovu, a political analyst at the Wits University School of Management, told AFP. “It’s like coalition talks.”
For 30 years since the birth of post-apartheid democracy, the late Nelson Mandela’s ANC has held an absolute majority and elected a president from among its own ranks.
But the former liberation movement – weakened by corruption and the economic performance of the new government – has seen its support, leaving only 159 seats.
“Apart from the DA and the IFP, Ramaphosa will find support from smaller parties as insurance,” author and political analyst Susan Boysen said amid reports that some ANC MPs may vote against their leader.
“He needs a buffer,” he said.
But former ANC youth leader Julius Malema, who wants to nationalize land and some private companies, will not join the leftist EFF administration.
Malema told reporters on Thursday that he would vote for the ANC’s presidential candidate if its members were promised the speaker or deputy speaker in parliament.
But he condemned the idea of joining a unity government with the DA, which has promised privatization and market reforms.
“We made it clear to the president that we are not opposed to a government of national unity,” Malema said of his earlier meeting with Ramaphosa.
“We are opposed to merging the DA with the Freedom Front Plus because it represents imperialism, racism and white supremacy, backwards.”
Freedom Front Plus is a right-wing party seeking an autonomous Afrikaner homeland.
He said that Zille’s parties for the DA and the ANC had agreed that the coalition was only for parties that respect the constitution, and this did not include the EFF.
“This is an agreement between constitutionalists, between people who want to protect the constitution and we know what the EFF thinks about the constitution,” he told the SABC.
A former trade unionist turned billionaire businessman, Ramaphosa, 71, came to power in 2018 after Zuma was forced out over corruption charges.
Once described by Mandela as one of the most talented leaders of his generation, Ramaphosa played a key role in the negotiations that led to the end of apartheid in the early 1990s.
He said he would usher in a new dawn for South Africa after receiving the country’s colours. But critics say it’s disappointing.
Under his watch, unemployment reached record highs and pushed the ANC to its worst ever election result.
The party’s recent move towards the center could further hamper its popularity with a coalition backed by centre-right and far-right groups, particularly within the ranks of the ANC.
The Broad Church Party is a left-leaning outfit that oversees welfare and economic empowerment programs for poor, black South Africans.
