That giant whooshing sound you may have heard coming from Africa’s southern tip was a collective sigh of relief. South Africa’s top two political parties — the ruling African National Congress and the longtime opposition Democratic Alliance — managed to put aside their differences to form a national unity government and reelect Cyril Ramaphosa as president.
And that popping noise? That would have been the sound of heads exploding among the country’s radical socialists, populists and ethno-nationalists. They can’t countenance the idea of the continent’s most storied Black liberation movement sharing power with the party known as the representative of wealthy White suburbia.
Such a governing alliance seemed unlikely before the May 29 election, which left the ANC shorn of its parliamentary majority and needing a coalition partner to stay in power. But this alliance of the sensible center should allow South Africa to tackle its myriad problems, attract foreign investment and reach its potential as the continent’s economic engine. Stocks and the local currency, the rand, were buoyed by the news.
This governing coalition also avoided what many South Africans feared would be the “nightmare scenario”: an alliance between the ANC and extremists on the fringes. They include former ANC youth leader and firebrand Julius Malema, a red beret-wearing socialist who advocates sweeping nationalization of industry and confiscation of White farmland, as well as corrupt former president Jacob Zuma, whose tenure accelerated South Africa’s downward slide.
Zuma’s new Zulu-centric party, uMkhonto weSizwe, or MK, finished third, mostly on the strength of its support from Zuma’s KwaZulu-Natal heartland. Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters party came in a distant fourth. The two have joined in an opposition alliance with other leftist parties calling themselves the Progressive Caucus. Zuma blasted what he called the “White-led unholy alliance” between the DA and the ANC.
Zuma and Malema can still make trouble in Parliament, but for now they are consigned to the fringes. It must be particularly galling to Malema, a notorious race-baiter who likes to chant “kill the Boer,” meaning kill White farmers, to now sit powerless on the opposition benches while a White woman, Annelie Lotriet of the Democratic Alliance, serves as deputy speaker of Parliament.
You know what they say about karma.
Achieving the governing partnership required some sleight of hand by Ramaphosa.
After the ANC received just 40 percent of the vote, he called for a government of national unity. That harked back to South Africa’s first all-race democratic election in 1994 after the end of apartheid. The ANC that year won more than 62 percent of the vote and 252 seats in the 400-member Parliament. Nelson Mandela was elected the country’s first Black president, and he invited all other parties to join a unity government as a show of magnanimity and reconciliation. He asked the country’s last White apartheid leader, F.W. de Klerk, to become a deputy president.
This time, with just 159 seats, the ANC needed a partner, or partners, to form a majority. Ramaphosa cleverly called for a government of national unity and invited all the competing parties to join. Malema swiftly rejected any government that included the White-led Democratic Alliance. Zuma, doing his best imitation of Donald Trump, called the elections rigged and ordered his newly elected MK members to boycott the opening of Parliament.
These self-defeating maneuvers freed the ANC to form a coalition with the DA, which won nearly 22 percent of the votes and 87 seats in Parliament, giving the unity government well over a majority. Other smaller parties joined, and the radicals were left seething on the outside.
The new government is not a natural or easy coalition. And it’s uncertain how long it will last. Cabinet seats have to be divvied up. And the parties have to reconcile their starkly different policy positions on everything from affirmative action for the Black majority to reining in rampant corruption.
Foreign policy will be a particular challenge. The ANC has leaned toward Russia in its war against Ukraine. The DA leader, John Steenhuisen,made a six-day visit to Ukraine and said South Africa needed to “stand with the free world and come out hard against Russian aggression.” The ANC government took Israel to the International Court of Justice over its war in Gaza, and all the ANC members of Parliament backed a nonbinding resolution to close the Israeli Embassy in South Africa and cut diplomatic ties. The DA opposed that resolution and has adopted a more evenhanded approach to the conflict.
As a former liberation movement, the ANC always felt bound by loyalty to its old friends during the struggle, including Russia, the Palestinians, Cuba, Libya and China. But South Africa needs more trade and investment from the West, especially the United States. This new centrist alliance gives Ramaphosa the chance to sideline the more radical faction of his party and jettison some of the country’s more controversial foreign policy positions.
A government of the sensible center is what most South African voters clearly wanted.
Maybe this is a lesson for Europe, which is grappling with the rise of the far right after E.U. parliamentary elections. And the United States, where bipartisan centrist governing used to be commonplace but where House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) now finds himself vilified on the far right for relying on centrist coalitions with Democrats to avoid government shutdowns and pass major legislation.
If South Africa can make it work, their model of unity might become the country’s most valuable export.
Source link : https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/19/south-africa-anc-democratic-alliance-government-national-unity-cyril-ramaphosa/
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Publish date : 2024-06-19 11:49:43
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