South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was on Friday re-elected for a second term, after his party struck a dramatic late coalition deal with a former political foe just hours before the vote.
Ramaphosa, the leader of the African National Congress (ANC), won convincingly in Parliament against a surprise candidate who was also nominated — Julius Malema of the Economic Freedom Fighters. Ramaphosa received 283 votes to Malema’s 44 in the 400-member house.
The 71-year-old Ramaphosa secured his second term with the help of lawmakers from the country’s second-biggest party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), and some smaller parties. They backed him in the vote to push 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 the Parliament.
Photo: Reuters
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 Ramaphosa stays on as the leader of Africa’s most industrialized economy. The parties would co-govern in South Africa’s 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.
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 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.
However, 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 over high levels of poverty, inequality and unemployment.
Analysts say complications might lie ahead, although, given the starkly different ideologies of the ANC, a former liberation movement, and the centrist, business-friendly DA, which won 21 percent of the vote in the national election, the second-largest share behind the ANC’s 40 percent.
For one, the DA disagreed with the ANC administration’s move to accuse Israel of genocide in Gaza in a highly sensitive case at the UN’s top court.
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