CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — For the first time in 30 years, South African lawmakers will elect a president on Friday with the result not being a mere formality.
Cyril Ramaphosa seeks a second term as leader of the Africa’s most industrialized economy but his party, the African National Congress, was weakened after losing its long-standing majority in last month’s elections. He goes needs support from other parties if he wants to return as president.
The ANC hopes that a general coalition agreement with others – particularly the main opposition Democratic Alliance – will hold and that they will support Ramaphosa’s re-election. The ANC needs lawmakers from parties that were once its main political enemies to now vote for Ramaphosa and continue the ANC’s three-decade tenure as president.
The ANC announced on Thursday that it had a coalition agreement in principle with the DA and other smaller parties, but ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula said the final details of the agreement were still being worked out. He did not say that there was an agreement among the coalition partners for their legislators to vote for Ramaphosa in Parliament, even though he said that was what the ANC hoped would happen.
The DA, the second-largest party in Parliament behind the ANC with a potentially decisive number of lawmakers, said negotiations over the exact details continued overnight and into early Friday and that there was no agreement signed just hours before the Parliament meeting at 10am local time. time.
“This morning at 2 a.m., we thought we had a deal and final agreement, but … some issues have come up and they’re just trying to resolve them,” Helen Zille, the federal prosecutor’s chair, told reporters. We will have to work until the last minute to reach an agreement.”
She said DA lawmakers would vote for Ramaphosa if the deal was signed.
Ramaphosa, 71, is expected to be re-elected as no other candidate has been put forward, but the country was on a political knife’s edge ahead of the first session of Parliament since the historic election of May 29th. Ramaphosa arrived at the Parliament session and smiled and shook hands with members of his party before taking his seat.
The session was being overseen by the chief justice and Parliament will first swear in hundreds of lawmakers for a new five-year term and then elect a president and vice-president before voting for president. It could take hours. The 400-seat lower house of Parliament, called the National Assembly, will vote by secret ballot for all of these positions. A majority of votes cast are required to elect a president.
The ANC faced a deadline to cobble together some kind of coalition agreement, as Parliament must meet for the first time and vote on the president within 14 days of the election results being declared.
South Africa has not faced this level of political uncertainty since the ANC came to power in the first multiracial elections in 1994, which ended nearly half a century of white minority rule under the apartheid system of racial segregation.
The ANC has maintained a clear majority in Parliament since then, meaning that elections for the president were formalities and all South African leaders since then have belonged to the ANC, starting with Nelson Mandela. Last month’s elections changed this situation, as the ANC’s vote share fell to 40%. The DA won the second largest share of the vote, with 21%, making it a key party in coalition negotiations.
The ANC proposed to form a government of national unity after the elections and invited all 17 other parties that won seats in Parliament to join. Some refused.
At least one party, the MK Party of former ANC leader and South African President Jacob Zuma, has said it will boycott the first session and that its 58 legislators will not take their seats. This is not expected to affect the voting process, as South Africa’s constitution says that at least a third of the 400 legislators need to be present for there to be a quorum and for votes to take place. The ANC alone has more than a third of the seats.
Parliament will also meet in an unusual setting after a fire in 2022 destroyed the National Assembly building in Cape Town. It has not yet been restored and so lawmakers will decide their country’s next leader at a conference center near the city’s port area.
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Magome reported from Johannesburg.
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