Team Blitz India
CYRIL Ramaphosa has been re-elected as South Africa’s president for a second term after his party struck a lastminute deal with political rivals. Ramaphosa’s African National Congress, which came to power in 1994 after waging a decades-long battle against apartheid, lost its majority for the first time in an election last month and spent two weeks locked in intensive behind-the-scenes talks with other parties.
Convincing victory
Ramaphosa won convincingly in Parliament against a surprise candidate who was also nominated — Julius Malema of the far-left 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, and some smaller parties. They backed him in the vote and got 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 Parliament.
Last-minute deal 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 will now co-govern South Africa in its first national coalition where no party has a majority in Parliament. The deal, referred to as a government official national unity, brings the ANC together with the DA, a whiteled 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. The ANC lost its 30-year parliamentary majority in the election that laid bare the frustrations of millions of poor Black South Africans still seeking a better life decades after the end of white minority rule.
Several desertions
Many deserted the ANC, which liberated the country from apartheid and had been the governing party ever since, leaving it with just 40% of the vote.
While it remained the biggest party, the once dominant ANC was unable to form a government on its own for the first time or reelect Ramaphosa in Parliament. So began two weeks of frenzied talks with the DA, the second biggest party and a surprise choice for a coalition partner, to find common ground.
