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.”

A child plays with her teddy bear as people cast their votes at a polling station on the Cape Flats during South African elections in Cape Town, South Africa, May 29, 2024.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

The African National Congress appeared on course to lose the parliamentary majority it has held for 30 years, partial results from South Africa’s national election showed, in what would be the most dramatic political shift since the end of apartheid.

With results from 10% of polling stations, the ANC’s share of the vote on May 29th’s election stood at 42.3%, with the pro-business Democratic Alliance (DA) at 26.3% and the Marxist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) at 8.1%, data from the electoral commission showed.

If the final results were to resemble the early picture, the ANC would be forced to make a deal with one or more other parties to govern— a situation that could lead to unprecedented political volatility in the coming weeks or months.

Under South Africa’s constitution, the newly elected National Assembly will elect the next president.

With the ANC still on course to be the largest party, its leader Cyril Ramaphosa is likely to remain as the country’s president, although a poor showing could make him vulnerable to a leadership challenge from within party ranks.

The ANC has won national elections held every five years since the landmark 1994 election, which marked the end of apartheid and the ascent of Nelson Mandela as President.

But since those heady days the ANC’s support has declined because of disillusionment over issues such as high unemployment and crime, frequent power blackouts and corruption.

The early results showed the ANC and the DA neck-and-neck on about 34% each in the key province of Gauteng, which includes the country’s business capital Johannesburg and the sprawling townships of Soweto and Alexandra.

The Zuma factor

In KwaZulu-Natal, a populous eastern province where the major city of Durban is located, a new party led by former President Jacob Zuma, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), was performing strongly, with 41.7% of the vote versus 20.1% for the ANC.

Zuma was forced to quit as President in 2018 after a string of scandals and has since fallen out with the ANC leadership, leading him to throw his weight behind MK. The party, named after the ANC’s armed wing from the apartheid era, appeared to be costing both the ANC and the EFF votes, especially in KwaZulu-Natal.

By law, the electoral commission has seven days to declare full results, but in practice it is usually faster than that. In the last election, in 2019, voting took place on May 29 like this year and final results came on May 31

The new Parliament must convene within 14 days of final results being declared and its first act must be to elect the nation’s President.

This means that if the ANC is confirmed to have lost its majority there could be two weeks of intense and complex negotiations to agree on how to form a new government.