The ANC lost its parliamentary majority on Saturday In historic elections, South Africa is on a new political path for the first time since the end of the apartheid regime 30 years ago.
With nearly 99% of the votes counted, the once-dominant ANC received just over 40% of the vote in Wednesday’s election, a far cry from the majority it has had since elections were called in 1994, which All races ended up voting. The white minority government and Nelson Mandela’s rise to power.
The Independent Election Commission has not yet officially announced the election results Associated Press.
Although the opposition parties considered it a transcendent progress for a country fighting extreme poverty and inequality, it was… The ANC remains the largest party, but will now have to find a coalition partner or partners to remain in government. And the re-election of President Cyril Ramaphosa for a second and final term. Parliament elects the President of South Africa after national elections.
The result ended the ANC’s three-decade dominance of South Africa’s nascent democracy, but the road ahead looks complicated for Africa’s most advanced economy, and there is still no coalition at the table.
The main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, received about 21% of the votes. The New Knesset Party, led by former President Jacob Zuma, who distanced itself from the African National Congress party he once led, came in third place with just over 14% of the vote in its first election.
What is urgent now is to identify the parties with which the ANC can form a coalition to govern from then on Parliament must meet and elect a president within 14 days of the official announcement of the election results. A series of negotiations are expected, which are likely to be complex.
The Knesset Party made one of its conditions for any agreement the removal of Ramaphosa from the position of leader and president of the African National Congress.
“Our willingness is to negotiate with the ANC, but not with Cyril Ramaphosa’s ANC,” Knesset Party spokesman Nlamulu Ndella said. Quoted from Euronews.
The Knesset member and the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters party have called for the nationalization of parts of the economy. The Democratic Alliance, a centrist party seen as business-friendly, could be more welcomed by foreign investors in a hypothetical coalition with the ANC.
Despite the uncertainty, South Africa’s opposition parties are celebrating the new political status as a much-needed change in the country of 62 million, the most developed in Africa, but also one of the most unequal in the world.
South Africa’s official unemployment rate is 32%, one of the highest in the worldIt disproportionately affects black people, who make up 80% of the population and have been the core of the ANC’s support for years.
Moreover, the ANC has been blamed – and apparently punished by voters – for failure to deliver basic government services affecting millions of people, leaving them without water, electricity or decent housing.
“For the last 30 years we have said that the way to save South Africa is to break the ANC majority, and we have achieved that.”announced John Steenhausen, leader of the Democratic Alliance.
Political change in South Africa sends a bad signal to Havana, a close ally of the ANC that has multi-million dollar business in that country. The Democratic Alliance has been a vocal critic Programs like Project ThuanoIn which dozens of Cuban soldiers work with the South African Defense Forcesleaving a millionaire income for the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) on the island.
In addition, more than 200 Cuban doctors exported by Havana work in that country, which has been strongly criticized by the Public Servants Association, the largest non-partisan union in South Africa.