JOHANNESBURG—South Africa’s future will be defined this week when political parties meet to thrash out a power-sharing deal following the country’s historic election on May 29.
The vote shattered the majority enjoyed by the African National Congress (ANC) since South Africa’s first multiracial poll in 1994, when it received 40 percent of the vote.
The electorate punished the party for decades of corruption, economic mismanagement, spiraling violent crime, high unemployment, poverty, and service delivery failures that left citizens without electricity and water for days, sometimes weeks.
With 159 out of 400 National Assembly seats, the ANC can’t form a government alone, as it has done for the past 30 years, and must rely on support from opposition parties.
The next-biggest party is the centrist, pro-business, pro-West, white-led Democratic Alliance (DA) with 87 seats.
It’s followed by two Marxist, anti-West populist parties led by charismatic former ANC stalwarts: former President Jacob Zuma’s Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), with 58 seats, and Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters, the EFF, with 39.
The rest of Parliament consists of a diverse bunch, including organizations that represent the interests of Zulus, Afrikaners, and mixed-race South Africans.
The ANC must sign an agreement with all, or some, of the other represented parties by the end of the week, as the Constitution requires Parliament to meet to elect a president two weeks after the declaration of election results.
Recent headlines in the world’s media reflect the current tension in Africa’s most industrialized economy.
London’s Financial Times wrote, “South Africa on the precipice.”
The Economist wrote, “South Africa on the brink of salvation or catastrophe.”
Both referred to a choice facing the ANC: Go right, by partnering with the DA, or swing left, by forming a coalition government with MK and possibly also the EFF.
However, President Cyril Ramaphosa has thrown a curveball by inviting them all—and their opposing policies and positions—to be part of an ANC-led Government of National Unity (GNU).
“My immediate reaction is, I can’t see how they can work together, even on the simplest of issues, because they literally hate one another and they all hate what the other stands for,” said professor Susan Boosyen, one of South Africa’s most respected political analysts.
“It’ll take a miracle for such a GNU to function even half-effectively,” she told The Epoch Times.
“The GNU concept puts the ANC, and its leader, first, and not the country,” Ray Hartley, of the respected South African think tank the Brenthurst Foundation, said of Mr. Ramaphosa’s proposal.
“It allows Ramaphosa to once again abdicate leadership and to avoid making a serious political choice—to go with the populist left or to pivot to the center.
“He gets to play [Nelson] Mandela, projecting himself as a great man mediating a great crisis, ignoring, of course, the fact that this is a crisis made entirely by the ANC and not by apartheid.
“Finally, Ramaphosa is trying to create a government consisting of components who will be in constant war with one another, strengthening the ANC’s position.”
Mr. Hartley said the president should lead his party into a coalition that he believes will take the country forward, rather than settling on something to “save the ANC’s blushes.”
“Taking the country forward means accelerating inclusive economic growth to create jobs on a large scale, sorting out state-owned enterprises and cities to bring about the delivery of sufficient electricity and water, and making the country safer and free from corruption,” he said.
“There are no shortcuts. Pretending that this moment is all about the ANC misses the point.”
The DA favors conservative economics and a free market that it says will encourage investors, create jobs, and eventually lift millions out of poverty.
In stark contrast, the ANC, EFF, and MK favor socialist policies and centralized state control of all sectors of the economy.
The DA manifesto says ANC policies, including affirmative action and black economic empowerment, have enriched an elite connected to the ruling party and should be replaced with “non-racialized, merit-based” employment.
The party wants experts in relevant fields to be appointed as Cabinet ministers and managers of state-owned enterprises, regardless of political affiliation.
That would end the ANC’s policy of “cadre deployment” by rewarding party loyalists with high-level, high-paying jobs even if they’re not qualified for the posts.
The DA says it wants to privatize the delivery of services that the state is failing to deliver adequately.
The MK, the EFF, and the ANC say the DA’s policies are designed to maintain “white privilege.” Both MK and the EFF say the DA is controlled by “white monopoly capital,” with the aim of keeping black people in “servitude and poverty.”
They both accuse Mr. Ramaphosa, who made a vast fortune in business before a return to politics, of being a “servant to white capital.”
MK and the EFF want to scrap South Africa’s Constitution to allow the state to control all wealth, including land, banks, and gold and platinum mines. They say profits from these must be shared with the poor.
Both parties have refused to compromise on the demands.
Economists say implementing such policies would ruin South Africa, causing investors and taxpayers to leave, resulting in more unemployment and poverty.
MK says it will consider partnering with the ANC only if Mr. Ramaphosa resigns.
In public, the ANC says he’s staying.
Professor Ann Bernstein, director of South Africa’s Center for Development and Enterprise, told The Epoch Times that Mr. Ramaphosa’s suggestion of a GNU is “shrewd.”
“He’s telling South Africans: ‘Well, you voted for all these different parties so now we’ll give you what you want and they can all govern,” she said.
“But his offer is also about saving him and the ANC from the destructive internal revolt that would happen if he went into a narrow coalition government with the DA.”
A senior ANC official told The Epoch Times that Mr. Ramaphosa’s preference is to partner with the DA.
“He thinks he can talk to them and they’d be far less disruptive in government than the EFF and MK. Governance would be more efficient because together the ANC and DA would hold a sizable majority,” the official said.
“But if he forms a coalition with the DA, it’s game over for him. His enemies in the ANC would either oust him or leave the party.
“He doesn’t want to be known as the man who brought about the ANC’s downfall.”
Ms. Bernstein said an ANC–DA coalition administration would satisfy local and international markets, investment would pour into South Africa, and there would be economic growth and more jobs.
“But the inclusion of the DA is reprehensible to the RET (Radical Economic Transformation) part of the ANC, which has much more in common with the EFF and MK in that they see the DA as a party of white racists and black puppets,” she said.
DA leader John Steenhuisen and some of its officials are white, and a significant part of its voter base is in the white suburbs, but the election result that gave the DA 22 percent of votes reflects support from citizens of all races.
Many of its policies are focused on alleviating poverty and improving education and health facilities in black townships and rural areas.
“These policies don’t matter to many in the ANC, and to many black South Africans, because of the apartheid past,” professor Adam Habib, a South African academic teaching politics at the University of London, said.
“The DA can help as many black people as it wants, and it’ll still be seen as a racist party that wants to dictate to black people and tell black people how useless they are compared with the white baas [boss],” he told The Epoch Times.
Mr. Habib said he had “no doubt” that DA policies would be the “way to go” in South Africa.
“Look, there are huge challenges with the DA,“ he said. ”I don’t think it’s been responsive to the issues of the black middle classes and it isn’t very nuanced on the racialized politics of our history.
“Having said that, it’s the most appropriate partner for growth, stability, poverty alleviation, and job creation.”
He added that MK and the EFF would bring “chaos” to government.
“An ANC alliance with EFF and MK is a dangerous alliance,“ Mr. Habib said. ”The EFF is a fascist party; it has rigid ideas; it’s violence-prone, and it would undermine long-term economic stability.
“Both the EFF and MK are also deeply corrupt. Zuma was one of the most corrupt presidents in history.”
A commission of inquiry found in 2021 that Mr. Zuma appointed cronies to steal an estimated $30 billion from state-owned enterprises when he was president between 2009 and 2018.
Mr. Zuma denies wrongdoing and has not been charged with a crime related to his time in office.
Mr. Malema has been found guilty of hate speech against white citizens on several occasions but denies he’s a racist. He also denies allegations of corruption against him.
The DA says it will consider joining the GNU only if the ANC guarantees the protection of the Constitution in its present form. That would mean the government wouldn’t be permitted to “nationalize” private wealth, including land, and would guarantee the independence of banks and mines.
It agrees to reconsider its commitments to scrapping black economic empowerment and affirmative action.
“These are significant concessions from the DA and very clever,” Ms. Booysen said. “These moves mean other parties cannot accuse it of racism going into the talks and they show the DA is willing to make sacrifices in the interests of stability and to negotiate in good faith.”
Mr. Habib said the DA’s participation in the GNU will “make or break” it.
“The DA has to be there for the GNU to be credible,” he said.
“It’s South Africa’s second-biggest party, whether the ANC radicals like it or not.
“Ramaphosa’s faction in the ANC knows that if the DA’s not in—and the GNU is dominated by the EFF and MK—he’s signing his, and the country’s, economic death warrant.”
