Entering a new era of unpredictable politics, South Africa’s newly elected Parliament met for the first time on Friday as lawmakers prepared to elect the country’s next president following last month’s national elections.
The African National Congress, in power for a long time, failed to obtain an absolute majority for the first time since coming to power after the end of apartheid, he is expected to form an uneasy alliance with rival parties, paving the way for Cyril Ramaphosa to be elected president for a second term.
But the two weeks since the election have been marked by turbulent negotiations between the ANC, led by Mr Ramaphosa, and rival political parties.
The process exposed deep fissures within the ANC and wider society and, tellingly, Parliament opened without any official announcement of a coalition deal.
The president’s party had governed with comfortable majorities since the end of apartheid in 1994. But its popularity has plummeted and it received only 40 percent of the vote in the last election, reflecting broad discontent with a continental power struggling with economic stagnation and strong discontent. unemployment and endemic poverty.
Having lost its dominance in Parliament, the ANC has mobilized the wide range of parties that won seats in the National Assembly, seeking to create what it calls a government of national unity that would give them all a role in the government.
The ANC sought to allay South Africans’ fears that the absence of a dominant single party nationally for the first time in the democratic era would lead to political chaos, which has plagued municipalities under shared leadership .
“The fundamental question is how to move South Africa forward,” said Fikile Mbalula, a senior ANC official, on the eve of the first sitting of the newly elected Parliament. “The majority of political parties in our country believe that this moment requires collaboration. »
But even before the 400 members of Parliament met Friday at a convention center along the Atlantic coast in Cape Town, deep divisions had emerged in the new political landscape.
The election’s surprise party, uMkhonto weSizwe, led by former president and ANC leader Jacob Zuma, boycotted the opening of Parliament after winning 58 seats, the third largest of all parties.
The party, known as MK, performed better than any freshman party in the democratic era. But Mr. Zuma has claimed, without providing evidence, that the elections were rigged and that his party won far more than the nearly 15 percent the electoral commission says it won.
MK has demanded that Mr Ramaphosa, who was Mr Zuma’s deputy before the two men fell out bitterly, resign if the ANC wants it to join a governing coalition. ANC officials called the request a failure.
The Economic Freedom Fighters, the fourth largest party – which also has its roots as a splinter group of the ANC – also appeared to reject the call for a unity government.
Party leader Julius Malema, who was a staunch youth supporter of the ANC before being expelled in 2012, said he would refuse to join a coalition that included the second-largest party, the Democratic Alliance. . The Democratic Alliance has a majority white leadership and has proposed ending affirmative action laws and other policies that encourage black people to become business owners.
“We reject this government,” Mr Malema said, saying the Democratic Alliance was promoting racist policies and “white supremacy”.
Instead of joining the ANC’s unity efforts, Mr Malema’s party has joined forces with five other parties in what they call the Progressive Caucus.
Resistance to the Democratic Alliance, which received almost 22 percent of the vote, also came from the ANC. Some members openly revolted, as did social partners and the business community, arguing that the Democratic Alliance would seek to obstruct, or even roll back, efforts to eliminate the persistent racial disparities of apartheid.
This pushback forced ANC leaders to walk a delicate line, as they sought to avoid alienating the party’s black voter base while selling the idea that a partnership with the Democratic Alliance would be a sensible decision for the country.
The Democratic Alliance adheres to free market capitalism, an approach that some ANC leaders say would help the economy and attract investors. This contrasts with some of the more aggressive wealth redistribution policies promoted by MK and the economic freedom fighters, such as nationalizing banks and seizing land from white owners without providing compensation.
Despite pledging last year never to work with the ANC in government, the Democratic Alliance was one of the parties most eager to participate in a unity coalition. Its leaders said it was important to prevent what they described during the election campaign as an “apocalyptic coalition” between the ANC and the Economic Freedom Fighters.
“We approached the issue in a positive and constructive way, and they did as well,” said Tony Leon, who was part of the Democratic Alliance negotiating team.
To soften the blow, ANC leaders sold a partnership with the Democratic Alliance in tandem with the Inkatha Freedom Party, a black-led party popular with speakers of Zulu, the most widely used language in South African homes.
