South Africa's ANC and DA agree on deal for a coalition government

 

South Africa's newly-elected parliament met this Friday for the swearing in of the new elected members, and in order to elect the country's President. 

Cyril Ramaphosa, expected to be reelected, has announced the formation of an unprecedented coalition government after his ruling ANC cobbled together a coalition deal.

For 30 years, electing its president by the parliament was like a formality for the African National Congress (ANC).

The ANC has been in power since the 1994 elections that marked the end of apartheid, but it lost its majority for the first time in the 29 May vote.

It keeps 159 elected parliamentarians over the 400 MPs in the National Assembly, which is seated in a convention centre in Cape Town, since the Parliament's permanent complex was badly damaged in a fire in 2022 and not yet reopened.

Friday's session started at 10 am local time (0800 GMT). 

The ANC has since been trying to put together a broad-based government of national unity. 

On Thursday night, the party announced other parties had agreed to take part, including its largest rival of the pro-business Democratic Alliance (DA), but the precise deal is still in progress.

Details were still being ironed out half an hour before parliament was due to sit, one of the senior DA officials on the party's negotiating team, Helen Zille, said on Friday.

Unity or coalition government?

"The ANC is going into this under the guise of a government of national unity, but really it isn't," political analyst Dr. Hlengiwe Ndlovu of the Wits University School of Governance told AFP. "It's more like coalition talks."

The two major leftist parties shunned the deal.

The radical leftist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) refused to join what the ANC still calls a unity government.

Graft-tainted former president Jacob Zuma's new party, the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), has disputed the 29 May election results and warned it would boycott Friday's sitting of the 400-member assembly.

The ANC had been talking to MK, but had not reached agreement.

The government will then "gravitate to the centre", According to ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula, backed by the centre-right DA, the Zulu nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and several smaller parties.

The DA now has 87 seats in Parliament.

MK 58, and the hard-left EFF 39, and the socially conservative Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) 17, which has its base in the Zulu community.

The IFP was actually the first to confirm it would take part in a unity government with the ANC and the DA.

Final details

"We are finalising the last details this morning because we are determined that we must get our country going," IFP leader Velenkosini Hlabisa told SABC early on Friday.

"The framework (agreement for a government) is part of discussions. Even overnight it was looked at," he said.

Under South Africa's constitution, the National Assembly must convene within two weeks of legislative elections being declared to elect its speaker, deputy speaker and the country's president.

The new parliament, once every MP is sworn in, will have to elect the President. They are expected to reelect Ramaphosa.