South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is Re-elected for a Second Term after a Late Coalition Deal
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was re-elected by lawmakers on Friday after his African National Congress party struck a dramatic late coalition deal with the main opposition party and others to allow him to clinch a second term in office.
Ramaphosa won convincingly in a Parliament vote against a surprise candidate who was also nominated Julius Malema, the leader of the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters. Ramaphosa got 283 votes to Malema’s 44 in the 400-member house.
The 71-year-old Cyril Ramaphosa secured his second term with the help of lawmakers from the second biggest Democratic Alliance party and others after the ANC lost its 30-year parliamentary majority in a landmark election two weeks ago. The ANC signed an agreement with the DA — once its fiercest political foe — just hours before the vote for president, ensuring Cyril Ramaphosa returned as 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.
The deal, which parties referred to as a government of the national unity, brings the ANC together in government with the DA, a white-led party that had for years been the main opposition and the main rival for the ANC. At least two other smaller parties are also part of the agreement that put South Africa into uncharted waters.
“The government of national unity is on track,” ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula said. “For the interest of the country, we said let’s work together. We have no fear of that.”
The agreement was necessary after the ANC lost its 30 years majority in a humbling national election for it last month. It was a turning point for Africa’s most industrialized economy. The ANC is the party of Nelson Mandela and had governed with a comfortable majority ever since the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule in 1994.
That three-decade dominance ended in the May 29 election, when the ANC’s share of the vote dropped to 40% amid discontent from South Africans over high levels of poverty, inequality and unemployment.
