Cordial coalition finding its feet in South Africa

South Africa’s new 10-party government of national unity has settled down in a vastly different atmosphere to the one that dominated the political landscape during the country’s general election in late May.
The confrontation and mudslinging that dominated the election period and its immediate aftermath has been replaced by a more cordial and stable environment in which the African National Congress (ANC) party and its new political partners are being allowed to find their feet.
Support for the ANC dropped to just over 40 per cent in the May 29th poll. As a result, the former liberation movement was forced to form a broad coalition of parties in parliament to prolong its three decades of rule.
Crisis-weary South Africans were concerned that many of the political leaders involved in the new dispensation would find it difficult to work together given the animosity between them over the decades.
Tensions were especially high between the ANC and the former main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA).
However, the tension and infighting that was expected between the coalition’s political parties, which have strong ideological differences in many policy areas, has so far failed to materialise – publicly at least.
Three months into the new political era, there is growing public optimism that the former political foes can find a way to harness the power of collaboration to turn the country’s moribund economy around.
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Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen, now the minster for agriculture in president Cyril Ramaphosa’s new government, is “pleasantly surprised” at the level of co-operation between the coalition partners.
“The six DA ministers in government have been allowed to get on and do things in their departments and start to change things, and I think that’s positive,” he says.
Steenhuisen says a key indicator of how the new administration is getting on will be the government’s new five-year development plan, which he expects to enter the public domain in October.
“It is a very good document, and I was very pleasantly surprised at how it became a realistic synthesis of the various parties’ manifestos. It is rooted in key documents [the constitution, the national development plan, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals], which we all agree on.”
Steenhuisen says that although the DA and the other coalition partners may have been on the opposite side of the table to the ANC for a long time, “the reality is the political situation in South Africa now requires us to work together”.
The only other route for the ANC to form a majority in parliament was to partner with more radical parties: the left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), and the more right-wing traditionalist uMkhonto weSizwe Party.
“And I think the consequences of that are frankly too horrifying for anyone to accept. So, we [the DA] are forced by voter choice [to form a coalition], but also by circumstance,” Steenhuisen says.
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The only real inter-party drama has centred on how the ministers appointed from the former opposition parties were performing in their new portfolios compared to their ANC counterparts.
According to local media reports, ANC leaders attending a recent party national working committee expressed concerns that some DA ministers, as well as sport, arts and culture minister Gayton McKenzie of the Patriotic Alliance, were making its own ministers look incompetent.
Gareth Newham, a senior political analyst at the South Africa-based Institute of Security Studies, says that although Ramaphosa’s unity government members appear to be working together, they have yet to be seriously tested.
“It is early days, and this government needs to hold together for the next five years. In addition, there are some major policy areas, like the ANC’s approach to introducing universal health coverage, that the parties do not agree on,” he explains.
According to Newham, the next major hurdles the unity government will face are the 2026 local elections, when campaigning could put the coalition under strain, and the ANC’s 2027 elective conference, which will see Ramaphosa replaced as party leader.
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“There is a huge risk factor in the local elections that might create a split in the coalition, as parties in South Africa tend to roll out their national-level leaders to gain votes in these local elections. After that comes the ANC’s internal elections,” Newham adds.
“There is no clear successor to Ramaphosa, who is the most popular politician in the ANC, as the deputy president [Paul Mashatile] is not widely trusted. So, there is a chance that whoever becomes the ANC’s next leader is not acceptable to the other coalition parties.”