South Africa’s calming civility
Voters demanded shared governance. Their leaders are listening. Humility may usher in a new era of honesty.
South African Président Cyril Ramaphosa, right, greets opposition Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen in Parliament June 14.
AP
With nearly half the world holding elections this year, many countries will see significant shifts in power. In South Africa, a parliamentary election has resulted in a comeuppance for the longtime ruling party. Yet it has also sparked a coming together that’s a lesson for diverse societies.
On Sunday, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a new government composed of 11 political parties. In May, voters deprived the ruling African National Congress (ANC) of a majority for the first time in 30 years. The new coalition, coming after weeks of negotiations, demonstrates a new phase of constitution-based decision-making.
Mr. Ramaphosa sought accord among groups that have deep historical and ideological differences.
The coalition represents the largest and most diverse Cabinet the country has ever seen. Former rivals and outright enemies are figuring out how to share power in provincial and local offices. Those arrangements are reviving a civic spirit of reconciliation that marked the country’s peaceful transition to nonracial democracy in 1994.
Yet the real strength of what adheres them to each other may reside in qualities not typically associated with strength. “Say what you want to say about Cyril Ramaphosa, [his] grace and humility in the face of a real defeat is admirable,” Mattie Webb, a postdoctorate fellow at Yale University and expert on South African history, posted on the social platform X. “And really holds this country together.”
The demand for change from ordinary South Africans follows decades of corruption and decay under the ANC. But power-sharing suits Mr. Ramaphosa. During the dismantling of apartheid in the early 1990s, he earned a reputation for calm as Nelson Mandela’s chief negotiator. “It’s a matter of realising the responsibility. We didn’t have mediators; it was just us. We built a relationship,” Roelf Meyer, who represented the apartheid government in constitutional talks, told the Daily Maverick last month. “You have to accept that you must put aside egos.”
Mr. Ramaphosa’s contrition following the May election has set the tone for a new era of governing. “The resilience of our democracy has once more been tested and the people have spoken loudly that they choose peace and democracy over violent, undemocratic and unconstitutional methods,” he said in his second inaugural address on June 19. “In their multitude, in voices that are many and diverse, the people of South Africa have voted and made known their wishes, their concerns and their expectations. We accept and respect the results of the elections and we once again say the people have spoken. Their will shall be done without any doubt or question.”
In his own statement on the new coalition, John Steenhuisen, leader of the Democratic Alliance, a historically white party, vowed that “the time for confrontation, is over. The time for collaboration, has arrived.” Politicians and political parties did not create the new government, he said. The people did.
Humility, wrote John Keane, a politics professor at the University of Sydney, “radiates in the presence of others, calmly, and cheerfully. ... It implies equality. It is generous.” As a political virtue, he noted, “humility is a vital resource that strengthens the powerless and tames the powerful.” For South Africans, humility among political leaders may usher a renewal of freedom through honesty and civic affection.