South Africa at Crossroads in Wake of Historic Defeat of ANC at Polls
Dominant post-apartheid party must form governing coalition for first time in 30 years
Economic Freedom Fighters President Julius Malema
By Jeff Armstrong
On May 29, South African voters forced the governing African National Congress to form a coalition government for the first time since ANC icon Nelson Mandela prevailed in the nation’s first democratic election in 1994.
But while Mandela’s power-sharing arrangement was a generous concession after a landslide victory to his former enemies after nearly three decades of imprisonment by the dominant white minority regime, 2024 marked the first of five subsequent elections in which the ANC failed to win an outright majority.
As a result, the ANC faces the unenviable choice of attempting to form a coalition government with one or both of its harshest critics on the left, or with the predominantly white Democratic Alliance party, which many ANC members would view as a historic betrayal of its liberationist roots.
ANC South African President Cyril Ramaphosa attempted to paper over this dilemma by announcing his intention to form a national unity government, including the DA party along with the ANC breakaways, the EFF and the MK, which jointly will hold slightly more parliamentary seats than the Democratic Alliance.
While the EFF and MK share common values in their pledged commitments to the needs of the black majority and the original cause of the ANC-led freedom struggle, they are also sworn mutual enemies of the DA, which has termed any coalition including the EFF or MK parties a “doomsday coalition.”
For its part, the MK party led by former South African President Jacob Zuma insists that the ANC remove Ramaphosa from leadership as a precondition for its joining the ANC in government. The EFF party led by Julius Malema, a former ANC youth leader, is willing to accept the ANC’s choices for presidential and cabinet positions in return for its acceptance of the EFF’s. Malema said the EFF will be seeking the position of Speaker of Parliament in negotiations with the ANC.
For the EFF, however, its primary goal of entering a governing coalition will be the advancement of its radical economic and political objectives, including expropriation of land without compensation to its 80% white ownership and redistribution to the black majority, rather than the mere pursuit of political power.
As lead EFF negotiator Floyd Shivambe, the party’s Deputy President, stated at a recent press conference:
“If there's going to be any government of national unity, there must be clarity of what unity what are uniting on. And our agenda that we are placing is that it must be the land question that must be at the center of what unites whatever government is going to be constituted. It must be a common agenda to improve the lives of our people because our people are still on the margins of the economy.
“It must be an agenda to provide free education, it must be an agenda to protect workers rights and interest to enforce minimum wages in all the sectors where they are applicable. That is what the agenda should be all about, it must not just be about position sharing, it must be on principal issues that primarily emancipates and protects the interest of our people.”
ANC - 159 seats
DA - 87 seats
MK - 58 seats
EFF - 39 seats
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Thanks for covering this important election.