DA leader John Steenhuisen was appointed Minister of agriculture.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa named a new Cabinet late Sunday night (June 30) after his African National Congress (ANC), the former main Opposition party and nine other parties agreed on the makeup of a coalition government following weeks of haggling.

Mr. Ramaphosa’s party retained the largest share of Ministerial positions as he appointed ANC officials to 20 of the 32 Cabinet Minister roles in the new coalition. But there were six Ministers from the Democratic Alliance (DA), once the main Opposition and the fiercest critic of the ANC, and Mr. Ramaphosa shared the remaining Ministerial posts among some of the smaller parties.

Also read: ​A new era: on the South Africa general election

Mr. Ramaphosa’s announcement of his new, multi-party Cabinet came a month after the ANC lost its 30-year political dominance of Africa’s most industrialised country in a national election, forcing it to seek coalition partners. The ANC’s share of the vote slumped to 40% in the May 29 vote and it lost its Parliamentary majority for the first time since it came to power at the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule in 1994. The DA won the second largest share of the vote with 21%.

Others have also joined what the ANC called a government of national unity that is open to any of the 18 parties represented in Parliament. Some have refused to take part.

The power-sharing coalition is unprecedented for South Africa. The country briefly had a coalition government at the end of apartheid, but that was under different circumstances. The ANC held a clear majority then after the first all-race election, but new President Nelson Mandela invited others into his government in an act of reconciliation.

This time, the ANC needed the help of lawmakers from the DA and other parties to reelect Mr. Ramaphosa for a second term.

South Africans deserted the ANC in the landmark national election amid frustration over poverty and some of the highest rates of inequality and unemployment in the world, and Mr. Ramaphosa said on June 30 that those issues would be priorities for the coalition government.

While there are 11 parties in the coalition, the ANC and the DA — which were ruling party and main Opposition for years — are the two largest and the key players. Talks between them have been tense and drawn out and the DA was reportedly on the verge of walking away from a power-sharing agreement until a meeting between Mr. Ramaphosa and DA leader John Steenhuisen on Friday.

“We have shown that there are no problems that are too difficult or too intractable that they cannot be solved through dialogue,” Mr. Ramaphosa said, noting the negotiations had been complex.

In some of his most significant Cabinet decisions, Mr. Ramaphosa reappointed Paul Mashatile of the ANC to continue as his deputy president. Mr. Ramaphosa also appointed Parks Tau of the ANC as the Minister of trade and industry, an important portfolio that the DA was seeking and was at the heart of some of the tensions between the two parties.

DA leader Steenhuisen was appointed Minister of agriculture, while Mr. Ramaphosa also brought the leaders of four other political parties into his Cabinet as new Ministers.

“We have had to ensure that all the parties are able to participate meaningfully in the national executive,” Mr. Ramaphosa said.

South African Président Cyril Ramaphosa, right, greets opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) leader, John Steenhuisen, left, at the first sitting of Parliament since elections, in Cape Town, South Africa, Friday, June 14, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

In a country where racial segregation was once brutally enforced, South Africa’s new coalition government has brought a Black president and a white opposition leader together in an image of unity. Yet the power-sharing agreement sealed a week ago between President Cyril Ramaphosa’s African National Congress party and the Democratic Alliance, one of South Africa’s few white-led parties, has unwittingly renewed some racial rifts.

Also read: ​A new era: on the South Africa general election

Many Black South Africans have expressed discomfort with a white-led party being back in power, even in a coalition. The country is haunted by the apartheid system of white minority rule that ended 30 years ago but is still felt by millions among the Black majority who were ruthlessly oppressed by a white government and remained affected by unresolved issues of poverty and inequality.

South Africa is now faced with the likelihood of seeing more white people in senior government positions than ever since apartheid ended. White people make up around 7% of the country’s population of 62 million.

The ANC liberated South Africa from apartheid in 1994 under Nelson Mandela, the country’s first Black president. Its three-decade political dominance ended in the landmark May 29 election, forcing it to form a coalition. The DA, with its roots in liberal white parties that stood against apartheid, won the second largest share of votes.

Both have promoted their coming together in a multi-party coalition as a new unity desperately needed in a country with vast socioeconomic problems.

But history lingers. The DA suspended one of its white lawmakers on Thursday, days after being sworn into Parliament, over racist slurs he made in a social media video more than a decade ago. Renaldo Gouws — reportedly a student in his 20s at the time — used an especially offensive term for Black people that was infamous during apartheid and is now considered hate speech.

Mr. Gouws faces disciplinary action from his party, and the South African Human Rights Commission said it will take him to court. The DA, which previously fended off allegations of favouring whites, is again under scrutiny.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions, an important political ally of the ANC, asserted that Mr. Gouws’ outburst was symptomatic of a DA that is “soft on racists.” The DA “needs to reflect on and address this if it wants to be accepted as a partner in the government of national unity by ordinary South Africans,” it said.

DA leader John Steenhuisen denied in a television interview that his party is dedicated only to white interests, saying it wouldn’t have won the second largest share of votes in a Black majority country if it was. The DA has Black and white lawmakers and supporters, but its only Black leader left the party in 2019, questioning its commitment to Black South Africans.

Political analyst Angelo Fick said the DA does have a “sense of whiteness” in the eyes of many South Africans and has created that by being “utterly disinterested in speaking to the concerns about race from Black South Africans.”

Shortly before Mr. Gouws’ case, racially charged language came from another direction when the MK Party of former President Jacob Zuma — once an ANC leader — called Mr. Ramaphosa a “house negro” for entering into the agreement with the DA. Mr. Zuma’s party also referred to white DA chairperson Helen Zille as Mr. Ramaphosa’s “slave master.”

Socioeconomic frustration

The MK Party and the Economic Freedom Fighters — the third and fourth biggest parties in Parliament — have refused to join what the ANC calls a government of national unity open to all. They said the fundamental reason is the DA, which they say is committed only to the well-being of South Africa’s white minority.

“We do not agree to this marriage of convenience to consolidate the white monopoly power over the economy,” EFF leader Julius Malema said. Mr. Malema has sometimes provoked racial tensions demanding change, once saying, “We are not calling for the slaughtering of white people, at least for now,” and that South Africa’s “white man has been too comfortable for too long.”

He now says his party is not against white people but against a perceived “white privilege” that leaves 64% of Black people in poverty compared with 1% of white people, according to a 2021 report by the South African Human Rights Commission.

He represents a new opposition to the ANC by many Black South Africans frustrated over the race-based inequality that’s evident after 30 years of freedom. White people generally live in posh neighbourhoods, while millions of Black people live in impoverished townships on the outskirts.

That frustration led many voters to give up on the ANC. The concerns about teaming up with the DA could weaken the party even further.

Addressing the ‘toxic’ divisions

In his inauguration speech Wednesday, Mr. Ramaphosa recognised the “toxic” divisions that remain decades after Mandela preached racial reconciliation. “Our society remains deeply unequal and highly polarized,” Ramaphosa said.

The ANC is trying to use the coalition as a kind of reboot of Mandela’s ideals. “To us, it doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white,” ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula said of the agreement with the DA. Mandela had used the phrase to signal he was open to all races serving in South Africa’s government. “Fundamentally,” Mbalula said, “the question is how do we move the country forward.”

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was reelected by lawmakers for a second term on June 14, after his party struck a dramatic late coalition deal with a former political foe just hours before the vote.

Mr. Ramaphosa, the leader of the African National Congress, won convincingly in Parliament against a surprise candidate who was also nominated — Julius Malema of the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters. Mr. Ramaphosa received 283 votes to Malema’s 44 in the 400-member house.

The 71-year-old Mr. Ramaphosa secured his second term with the help of lawmakers from the country’s second-biggest party, the Democratic Alliance, and some smaller parties. They backed him in the vote and got him over the finish line following the ANC’s loss of its long-held majority in a landmark election two weeks ago that reduced it to 159 seats in Parliament.

Also read: Explained | South African President Cyril Ramaphosa: escape from impeachment, ANC reelection and the road ahead 

During a break in what turned out to be a marathon parliamentary session, the ANC signed the last-minute agreement with the DA, effectively ensuring Mr. Ramaphosa stayed on as the leader of Africa’s most industrialized economy. The parties will now co-govern South Africa in its first national coalition where no party has a majority in Parliament.

The deal, referred to as a government of national unity, brings the ANC together with the DA, a white-led party that had for years been the main opposition and the fiercest critic of the ANC. At least two other smaller parties also joined the agreement.

Mr. Ramaphose called the deal — which sent South Africa into uncharted waters — a “new birth, a new era for our country” and said it was time for parties “to overcome their differences and to work together.”

“This is what we shall do and this is what I am committed to achieve as the President,” he said.

The ANC — the famed party of Nelson Mandela — had ruled South Africa with a comfortable majority since the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule in 1994.

But it lost its 30-year majority in the humbling national election on May 29, a turning point for the country. The vote was held against the backdrop of widespread discontent from South Africans over high levels of poverty, inequality and unemployment.

Analysts warn there might be complications ahead, though, given the starkly different ideologies of the ANC, a former liberation movement, and the centrist, business-friendly DA, which won 21% of the vote in the national election, the second largest share behind the ANC’s 40%.

For one, the DA disagreed with the ANC government’s move to accuse Israel of genocide in Gaza in a highly sensitive case at the United Nations’ top court.

The DA leader John Steenhuisen was the first to confirm the agreement.

“From today, the DA will co-govern the Republic of South Africa in a spirit of unity and collaboration,” he said as he stepped away from Friday’s proceedings for a speech carried live on television in which he said a deal was signed and that the DA lawmakers would vote for Mr. Ramaphosa for President.

The Parliament session started at 10 a.m. in the unusual setting of a conference center near Cape Town’s waterfront, after the city’s historic National Assembly building was gutted in a fire in 2022. The house first went through the hourslong swearing-in of hundreds of new lawmakers and electing a speaker and a deputy speaker.

The vote for president started late at night, with the results announced well after 10 p.m. Mr. Ramaphosa finished his acceptance speech as the clock ticked past midnight and into June 15.

Former President Jacob Zuma’s MK Party boycotted the session but that did not affect the voting as only a third of the house is needed for a quorum.

ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula said the party was open to talking with anyone else who wanted to join the unity government. There are 18 political parties represented in Parliament and he said the multi-party agreement would “prioritize the country across the political and ideological divide.”

Some parties, including Mr. Malema’s EFF, refused to join.

The two other parties that joined the coalition deal were the Inkatha Freedom Party and the Patriotic Alliance, which has drawn attention partly because its leader, Gayton McKenzie, served a prison sentence for bank robbery.

Mr. McKenzie said he had been given a second chance in life and that South Africa also had one now, a chance to solve its deep socioeconomic problems.

The ANC had faced a deadline to strike a coalition agreement as Parliament had to vote for the president within 14 days after election results were declared on June 2. The ANC had been trying to strike a coalition agreement for two weeks and the final negotiations went on overnight June 13 to June 14, party officials said.

South Africa has not faced that level of political uncertainty since the ANC swept to power in the 1994 first all-race election that ended nearly a half-century of racial segregation. Since then, every South African leader has come from the ANC, starting with Mandela.

The new unity government also harked back to the way Mandela, South Africa’s first Black president, invited political opponents to be part of a unity government in 1994 in an act of reconciliation when the ANC had a majority. Ramaphosa had played a key role in those negotiations as a young politician.

This time, the ANC’s hand was forced.

“The ANC has been very magnanimous in that they have accepted defeat and have said, ‘let’s talk’,” PA leader Mr. McKenzie said.