South Africa heads for a coalition government. Why that’s a win for its democracy.

The group gathered around the small TV in an abandoned Cape Town hospital on Sunday evening crackled with nervous energy. They had squeezed into one of the old patient wards, now the bedroom of a woman named Zubeida Brown, to watch the official announcement of the results of South Africa’s May 29 election.

Already, the outcome was clear: The country’s ruling party, the African National Congress, had lost its parliamentary majority for the first time in history. But as dramatic music swelled from the TV and an election official announced the final vote tally, one woman in the room, Faghmeeda Ling, sighed. “I wonder if we will see any change now,” she says. 

Indeed, it was a moment of deep uncertainty. Although the ANC still received the highest count of any party in the race – just over 40% – the result marked a seismic shift in South Africa’s political landscape. The ANC, which led the anti-apartheid movement, came to power in the country’s first democratic elections in April 1994, and the party has never gotten less than an absolute majority of the vote in any national election since.

Now, for the first time, South Africa will be ruled by a coalition government, which many political experts consider a pivotal moment in the young democracy’s “consolidation,” or coming of age. Equally encouraging, they say, is the fact that the ANC accepted the results without a fight.

“It’s clear that there’s not going to be massive undemocratic actions and pushback, like in many other countries” after a liberation movement loses its hold on power, says Melanie Verwoerd, a former ANC member of Parliament and political analyst. 

For Ms. Ling, like for many other South Africans, the moment was deeply symbolic – but also unsettling. She is one of the leaders of a community of about 1,000 people squatting in the rundown hospital complex because they cannot find an affordable place to live in Cape Town.

“We have had many empty promises,” from the ANC government over the years, she says. But now, after hearing the results, she felt equally unsure what the future would bring. 

Breakaway politics

There’s good reason for that. Going forward, much remains uncertain. With 159 seats in the 400-member National Assembly, the ANC will need to negotiate a coalition with one or more smaller parties to reach a majority. And its choices could not be more different. 

On the one hand is the pro-business Democratic Alliance, the ANC’s closest challenger with 87 seats, or just under 22% of the vote. Many see the DA as the most likely coalition partner, despite its reputation as a party favoring South Africa’s white minority. 

But the ANC may also choose to align itself with two parties run by its own former leaders, and whose supporters are largely its own disgruntled former voters. One is the Economic Freedom Fighters, a Marxist-leaning party run by former ANC Youth League President Julius Malema, that received just under 10% of the vote. 

But the election’s kingmaker may be the other ANC breakaway party, uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), which was founded only six months ago by controversial former president Jacob Zuma. It stormed to a nearly 15% share of the vote, the third-largest tally of any party. 

“This is the ANC cannibalizing itself,” says Rekgotsofetse Chikane, a lecturer at the Wits School of Governance at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. This is in line, he says, with a “gradual decline in its ability to hold people accountable and to provide services, and a distancing between the party and citizens.” 

Dr. Chikane himself knows what it is like to lose faith in the ANC. The son of a prominent former freedom fighter, the Rev. Frank Chikane, he grew up in the party and was a member of its youth league. But he left five years ago after becoming “disenchanted” with the lack of internal change. “I still have a deep love for the organization, but I also believe you can help the ANC from the outside,” he says.

“Victory for democracy”

For many South Africans, the five years since the last presidential election have been painful ones, marked by soaring unemployment and crime rates, crumbling infrastructure, and endemic political corruption. Many put the blame for that on the current administration of President Cyril Ramaphosa.

“When Jacob Zuma was president, things were better,” explains a street vendor named Ntuthuzelo Majaza, citing lower unemployment and a stronger economy during Mr. Zuma’s tenure, which ran from 2008 to 2019. 

Thirty-year-old MK voter Benjamin Zondo, who works as a tour operator, agrees. He says these election results are a welcome “lesson” for the ANC, which he had always voted for in the past.

“It’s a new system that is coming in place, and people want new hands,” he says.

But others are wary of the comeback of Mr. Zuma, whose time in power was marred by rampant theft of state money by the president and his associates.

“There isn’t necessarily an understanding that a lot of what we’re seeing today actually originated from Zuma’s presidency,” Ms. Verwoerd, the political analyst, says. For instance, she says the regular power cuts that have hit the country hard in the last few years can be partly traced to the poor management and corruption in the state-run energy provider, Eskom, during Mr. Zuma’s tenure. 

On Saturday night, Mr. Zuma cast a dark cloud on the electoral process by alleging vote rigging and threatening “trouble” if the results announcement went ahead.

But it did anyway. And afterward, as Mr. Ramaphosa addressed the country in the shadow of his own party’s dramatic free fall, he offered a different take on the disappointing results. 

The election, he said, “represents a victory for our democracy, for our constitutional order, and for all the people of South Africa.”