CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — The South African Democratic Alliance took the African National Congress, the party with which it co-governs the country, to court on Thursday over a pre-election speech in May delivered by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
It’s an early sign of friction between the new coalition partners. The court documents were submitted to the Electoral Court by the Attorney General’s Office in May, before it entered into a coalition with the ANC, but the latter decided to continue with the case.
The prosecutor asked the court to deduct 1% of the votes received by the ANC in the national elections of May 29 and fine Ramaphosa, the leader of the ANC, $10,900 and his party $5,450, for what he claims was a presidential speech that was used for election campaigning and constituted an abuse of power.
The ANC responded on Thursday by calling the prosecutor’s legal action “frivolous and unjustified” and said the president was following the Constitution when he made the speech.
Ramaphosa gave the speech three days before the elections in his capacity as head of state, but used parts of the speech to highlight what he said were the ANC’s successes during its 30-year rule as South Africa’s ruling party. The prosecution said that electoral rules do not allow him to engage in party politics and campaign for the ANC when he speaks as president.
The ANC lost its long-standing majority in the historic election, when it received just 40% of the vote. This forced him to create a coalition government for the first time to run The most industrialized country in Africa. The DA – the second largest party with 21% of the vote – is one of the seven parties represented in Ramaphosa’s Cabinet despite previously being the ANC’s fiercest critic.
The coalition, referred to as a “national unity government”, created a new political landscape for South Africa after the ANC governed since the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule in 1994. The election was the first time in South Africa’s young democracy that more people voted for other parties, stripping the organization once led by Nelson Mandela of your domain.
The left-leaning ANC and the centrist DA are the main parties in the coalition, but working together was considered unlikely, given their strong ideological differences and history of opposition to each other. They have largely managed to project a sense of unity over the last month since the coalition was agreed.
___
