The African National Congress (ANC) party lost its parliamentary majority on Saturday in a historic election that puts South Africa on a new political path for the first time since the end of apartheid 30 years ago.
With almost 99% of the ballots counted, the once dominant ANC had obtained just over 40% of the votes in Wednesday’s elections, a far cry from the majority it had held since the 1994 election call, in which that all races could vote, ended the white minority government and brought Nelson Mandela to power.
The independent electoral commission has not yet formally proclaimed the result of the elections, the AP agency reported.
Although the opposition parties considered it a transcendental advance for a country that fights against deep poverty and inequality, The ANC remains the largest party, but will now have to look for a coalition partner or partners to remain in Government and re-elect President Cyril Ramaphosa for a second and final term. Parliament elects the South African president after national elections.
The result ended the ANC’s three-decade dominance in South Africa’s young democracy, but the road ahead promises to be complicated for Africa’s most advanced economy, and there is still no coalition on the table.
The main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, won around 21%. The new MK party, led by former president Jacob Zuma, who has distanced himself from the ANC he once led, came third with just over 14% of the vote in the first election it entered.
The urgency now is to determine with which parties the ANC could form a coalition to govern, since Parliament must meet and elect a president within 14 days of the official declaration of the election results. A series of negotiations are expected to take place, which are likely to be complicated.
The MK party has made it one of its conditions for any deal that Ramaphosa be removed as leader and president of the ANC.
“Our willingness is to negotiate with the ANC, but not with Cyril Ramaphosa’s ANC,” said MK spokesperson Nhlamulo Ndlela, quoted by Euronews.
MK and the far-left party, the Economic Freedom Fighters, 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 African opposition parties celebrate the new political situation as a much-needed change for the country of 62 million inhabitants, which is the most developed in Africa, but also one of the most unequal in the world.
The official unemployment rate in South Africa is 32%, one of the highest in the worldand disproportionately affects black people, who make up 80% of the population and have been the core of ANC support for years.
Furthermore, the ANC has been blamed—and apparently punished by voters—for failures to deliver basic government services that affect millions of people, leaving them without water, electricity or adequate housing.
“For the last 30 years we have said that the way to rescue South Africa is to break the ANC majority, and we have achieved that”declared John Steenhuisen, leader of the Democratic Alliance.
The political change in South Africa sends a bad signal to Havana, a close ally of the ANC and with million-dollar businesses in that nation. The Democratic Alliance has been a harsh critic of programs like the Thusano Projectfor which dozens of Cuban soldiers work with the South African Defense Forceswhich leaves millionaire income for the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) of 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.
