Ushering in a new era of unpredictable politics, South Africa’s newly elected parliament convened for the first time on Friday as lawmakers prepared to choose the country’s next president following last month’s general election.
The long-ruling African National Congress failed to secure an absolute majority for the first time since taking power after the end of apartheid, but it managed to forge a tenuous alliance with at least two rival parties, paving the way for Cyril Ramaphosa to be elected president for a second term.
But the two weeks since the election have been tumultuous with negotiations between Ramaphosa’s ANC and rival parties.
The process has exposed deep rifts within the ANC and society at large, and it was a telling development that parliament opened without any official announcement of a coalition agreement – MPs were being sworn in amid news that a deal had been reached that removed the biggest obstacle to President Ramaphosa’s re-election.
The president’s party has ruled with comfortable majorities since the end of apartheid in 1994. But its popularity has plummeted, winning just 40 percent of the vote in the most recent election, reflecting discontent across the continent’s largest country, which is struggling with economic stagnation, high unemployment and deep poverty.
Having lost its hold on parliament, the ANC sought to negotiate with the broader range of parties that had seats in parliament in order to form a so-called national unity government that would give all parties a governing role.
The ANC has sought to allay fears among South Africans that the absence of a single dominant party at the national level for the first time in the democratic era could lead to the political chaos that has plagued municipalities under communal leadership.
“The fundamental question is how do we move South Africa forward,” said Fikile Mbalula, a senior ANC leader, on the eve of the newly elected parliament’s first meeting. “The majority of our political parties believe that this moment requires us to work together.”
But even before 400 members of parliament gathered at a conference centre on Cape Town’s Atlantic coast on Friday, sharp cracks were appearing in the new political landscape.
In a surprise election result, former president and ANC leader Jacob Zuma’s Umkhonto weSizwe party boycotted the opening of parliament after winning 58 seats, the third most of any party.
The party, known as MK, performed better than any first-year party in the democratic era, but Mr Zuma claims without evidence that the election was rigged and that his party won far more than the nearly 15 percent of the vote that the Electoral Commission said it received.
Muhammad Khan had demanded that Ramaphosa, who was Zuma’s deputy president before he fell out with Zuma, step down if the ANC wanted to join the coalition – a demand ANC officials say is unfeasible.
India’s fourth-largest political party, the Economic Freedom Fighters, which began as a breakaway group from the ANC, also appears to reject calls for a unity government.
The party’s leader, Julius Malema, who was an ANC youth firebrand before being expelled in 2012, has said he will not be part of any governing coalition that includes the second-largest party, the Democratic Alliance.
The Democratic Alliance is made up of mostly white leaders and proposes repealing affirmative action laws and other policies that encourage black business ownership.
“We reject this government,” Malema said, alleging the Democratic Alliance was promoting racist policies and “white supremacy”.
Instead of joining the ANC’s unity movement, Malema’s party joined forces with five other parties to form what is known as the “Caucus of Progressive Parliamentary Leaders.”
Resistance to the Democratic Alliance, which won about 22 percent of the vote, also came from within the ANC, where some members, as well as trade union and business partners, openly rebelled, claiming that the Alliance was trying to undermine or reverse efforts to end apartheid’s deeply rooted racial discrimination.
The backlash has forced ANC leaders to walk a delicate tightrope between selling the idea that an alliance with the Democratic Alliance was a smart move for the country while avoiding alienating the party’s base of black voters.
The Democratic Alliance supports free-market capitalism, which some ANC leaders believe will help the economy and attract investors, in contrast to the more aggressive wealth redistribution policies promoted by MK and the Economic Freedom Fighters, such as nationalizing banks and seizing land from white owners without compensation.
The Democratic Alliance was one of the parties most keen to join a unity coalition, despite vowing last year that it would never work with the ANC if it came to power.
Party leaders had said it was important to thwart what they called a “doomsday coalition” between the ANC and the Economic Freedom Fighters during the election campaign.
“We have approached it in a positive and constructive manner, and so have they,” said Tony Leung, who was part of the Democratic Alliance’s negotiating team.
To soften the backlash, ANC leaders aligned themselves with the Inkatha Freedom Party, a black-led political party popular among Zulu speakers, the language most widely spoken in South African homes, and touted an alliance with the Democratic Alliance.
Inkatha wants chiefs and other traditional leaders to play a greater role in government and to redistribute land to black South Africans, but proposes a more conservative approach than MK and the Economic Freedom Fighters.
The idea of Inkatha cooperating with the ANC has a certain symbolic significance.
In the tumultuous days leading up to the end of apartheid, fighting broke out between ANC and Inkatha supporters, leaving thousands dead and threatening to derail elections in 1994. “This is an important opportunity for both parties to heal the wounds of the past,” Inkatha leader Belenkosini Hlabisa said.
Mbalula went to great lengths to reject the notion that working with the Democratic Alliance or any other party would be a betrayal of the ANC’s core historical beliefs as Africa’s oldest liberation movement – the liberation of the black majority.
He noted that South Africa’s first democratic government, led by Nelson Mandela, was a government of national unity in which the ANC aligned with the National Party, the leader of the apartheid regime.
“We went into government with the people who put us in prison,” he said. “Did we die? We didn’t. Did we survive the moment? We survived.”
But South Africa now finds itself in a very different situation: Whereas then the country was united around the promotion of racial unity, the current government faces deep divisions stemming from a faltering economy.
Immigrants face accusations of taking up scarce job opportunities. The economy remains largely white-owned, fuelling resentment that white South Africans continue to benefit from an old racist system that favours them. Many black South Africans are trapped in rough townships, reinforcing segregated patterns of living.
