As South African President Cyril Ramaphosa urges unity and open dialogue about the upcoming coalition, former President Jacob Zuma boycotted the results ceremony. Despite finishing third, Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party has refused to acknowledge the results. However, the party may still hold significant influence over the country’s future.
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The final tally gave Ramaphosa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) 159 seats in the 400-seat National Assembly, its lowest score in a general election.
The vote share of the party, which Nelson Mandela led into the first post-apartheid government, slumped to just over 40 percent from the 57 percent it had won in 2019.
The centre-right opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) won 87 seats, Zuma’s MK 58 and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) of leftist Julius Malema 39, former ANC youth leader, followed by several minority outfits.
The new parliament has to meet within two weeks. Its first task will be to elect a president to form a new government.
With no outright winner for the first time since the advent of South Africa’s post-apartheid democracy, the ANC will first need to seek outside support to secure Ramaphosa’s re-election.
Zuma kingmaker?
Zuma is still barred from standing for parliament because of a conviction for contempt of court. So he is unlikely to be a coalition partner, analysts say.
But the former president and ANC member looks like the biggest winner in South Africa’s election as he is likely to have the most influence on what the ANC decides to do.
One of Zuma’s conditions for any discussions about coalition with the ANC is the departure of Ramaphosa.
The party also threatens to boycott the new parliament.
Zuma still says that the ANC under Ramaphosa is not the real ANC, researcher Harlan Cloete, from the University of Free State, told RFI. He claims he had to form his own movement because of the “political orientations that Ramaphosa gave to the ANC.”
His supporters also say they will not consider joining a coalition unless there is an agreement to pardon Zuma for his conviction.
Zuma was forced out of office as the president and ANC leader in 2018 following allegations of and was jailed for contempt of court in 2021, events which triggered riots where more than 350 people died.
His MK party is also strengthened by the fact that it looks likely unseat the ANC by a landslide in the populous province of KwaZulu-Natal, Zuma’s home region.
‘Doomsday Coalition’
The ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula, meanwhile, says the party is having “exploratory discussions at the moment? “We talk to everybody,” he said.
The ANC, he says, is hoping to reach agreement quickly.
Though the DA is the biggest opposition winner in terms of numbers, it is highly unlikely to find common ground for a coalition with the ANC.
The DA’s white leader John Steenhuisen says he is keen to work with the ANC, but if only to head off what he calls the “Doomsday Coalition” between the ruling party, Zuma’s MK and Malema’s EFF.
He described pledges in the MK and EFF manifestoes to nationalise privately owned land and undermine judicial independence as “an all-out assault on the constitution of our country”.
“We urge all others who love our constitution and all it represents to set aside petty politics and narrow sectarian interests and join hands now,” Steenhuisen said.
Yet, as the country still feels its painful history of apartheid, white South Africans only make up just seven percent of the population. The DA thus appears to be struggling to shake off an image as a party of rich whites, according to political analyst Melanie Verwoerd.
“I don’t believe that they set out to be a party of white privilege,” she said, “but they ended up being that,” an accusation the DA has repeatedly rejected.
EFF in the front line
For all these reasons, Julius Malema and his EFF appear as the ‘safe’ partner for the ANC, at least for now.
Malema has scored points by announcing from the outset that he is open for discussions.
“Julius Malema has achieved a masterstroke by taking the first step, like an opening in chess, in the sense that he is opening a path that distances himself from the MK party,” political scientist Ongama Mtimka, from Nelson Mandela Bay University, told RFI.
Malema, who like Zuma used to be part of the ANC, also says he doesn’t care whoends up being president, Cyril Ramaphosa or anyone else.
He only told his voters, “we do not need to agree on everything before the fourteen-day deadline to form a coalition.”
For all these reasons, analysts thinks he is positioning himself cleverly, and could be the ANC’s strongest ally for now.
(with newswires)
