South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, centre, whose second term depends on negotiations between his African National Congress and other parties, in Centurion, north of Johannesburg, on May 14.ILAN GODFREY/The New York Times News Service
South Africa’s ruling party, fighting for its political life after its worst-ever election performance, says it will keep President Cyril Ramaphosa as its leader despite a disastrous plunge in the party’s vote total last week.
Final results from the election, declared official on Sunday, show that the African National Congress (ANC) dropped to 40 per cent in the national vote, down from 57 per cent in the last election. This leaves it dependent on other parties as it seeks to extend its 30-year grip on power.
The fastest-rising opposition party, the MK Party headed by former president Jacob Zuma, won almost 15 per cent of the vote to finish a surprising third in the election. It immediately announced that it will insist on Mr. Ramaphosa’s resignation as a condition for its support for the ANC government.
The ANC’s secretary-general, Fikile Mbalula, acknowledged on Sunday that the ruling party “got a beating” in the vote. But he insisted that the party will not negotiate any deal that requires Mr. Ramaphosa’s departure. “That is a no-go area,” he told a news conference.
As coalition negotiations get under way, the ANC’s decisions in the coming weeks will determine its political and ideological future.
It could seek support from the liberal Democratic Alliance (DA), a pro-business party that won 22 per cent of the vote, which would please the markets and ensure stability. Or it could opt instead for deals with Mr. Zuma’s party or the fourth-biggest party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), both of which are pushing for radical policies on land expropriation and nationalization of banks and mining companies.
A deal with the DA would appeal to Mr. Ramaphosa, who built a business empire for two decades before returning to government in 2014 and has promoted investor-friendly reforms as president since 2018. But many ANC leaders are uncomfortable with the DA’s leaders, who have been scathingly critical of the ANC and have pushed out several Black politicians from the DA’s senior ranks.
Instead, some of the ANC’s most influential members are believed to prefer Mr. Zuma’s party or the EFF, both of which are led by former ANC politicians who broke away to form their own parties after disputes with the ANC’s leadership.
Both parties are often seen as ANC factions that would be ready to return to the party if they can strike an advantageous deal. Mr. Zuma has spent most of his life in the ANC, beginning in the apartheid era, and named his new party after the ANC’s former paramilitary wing, uMkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”).
Any deal between the ANC and Mr. Zuma or the EFF would rattle the markets and damage South Africa’s currency, while raising questions about Mr. Ramaphosa’s leadership. But this might be a price that the ruling party would pay to lure back its former breakaway factions and gain a parliamentary majority. The DA’s leader, John Steenhuisen, has used the term “Doomsday Coalition” to describe a potential ANC alliance with Mr. Zuma or the EFF. He has left the door open to a possible deal with the ruling party, and he announced on Sunday that he has already appointed a negotiating team to talk to all parties in an attempt “to rescue South Africa from Doomsday.”
Mr. Zuma, who was forced to resign as president in 2018 after mounting corruption scandals, has feuded bitterly with Mr. Ramaphosa for years. In recent days, he has alleged, without evidence, that the latest election was “rigged” against his party.
On the weekend, he called for a recount of the vote results, demanding that South Africa’s election commission must cancel its plans to announce the official election results. “Don’t start trouble,” he warned ominously, causing many observers to see it as a threat of violence.
Mr. Zuma’s daughter, Dudu Zuma-Sambudla, who plays a key role in her father’s party, called for the arrest of a senior member of the election commission for alleged involvement in vote-rigging.
Mr. Ramaphosa, for his part, praised the commission for its “professionalism and integrity” and described the election as “free, fair and peaceful.”
Under the South African constitution, the newly elected parliament must meet within two weeks to choose a president. While there will be backroom talks on formal coalitions, the ANC could opt to submit Mr. Ramaphosa’s candidacy without any official deals with other parties, since it knows that the DA is unlikely to support any candidate from the EFF or Mr. Zuma’s party.
“As parliament’s largest political party, the ANC could simply go it alone … and form a minority government that lobbies for parliamentary support on an issue-by-issue basis,” said Lindiwe Mazibuko, a former DA parliamentary leader, in a published commentary on Sunday.
“A combination of outsize presidential power and some nifty negotiation skills could be all the ANC needs to form a national government and pass priority legislation on an issue basis.”