In South Africa, ANC holds out its hand to strongest rival

The National Assembly sat until late into the night. By the time the presiding judge announced Cyril Ramaphosa’s reelection as president of South Africa, some of the newly sworn-in members of Parliament were nodding off in their chairs, despite the harsh lights of the convention center where the solemn inaugural parliamentary session was taking place.

But when Mr. Ramaphosa stood to make his acceptance speech, just before midnight last Friday, his fellow members of the African National Congress were not the only ones to erupt in song and celebration.

Opposition parliamentarians joined in the applause, too, marking an historic shift in South Africa’s political landscape: the union of several parties under a new “government of national unity,” including the ANC’s oldest rival, the white-led Democratic Alliance.

“This is a new chapter for South Africa,” declared John Steenhuisen, the DA’s leader. “The era of coalitions has commenced,” he told reporters outside the conference hall, praising “a shared respect and defense of our constitution and the rule of law.”

“Our people expect all parties to work together to achieve ... a democratic society based on non-racialism, non-sexism, peace, justice and stability,” Mr. Ramaphosa urged in his acceptance speech.

Obliged by disappointing election results to woo opposition parties into a coalition government that could count on a majority in Parliament, Mr. Ramaphosa shocked some of his former allies by bringing the Democratic Alliance into the fold.

A traditionally white party that opposed apartheid, the center-right DA has lost many Black members in recent years. Its pro-business and free-market program is often at odds with the ANC’s left-wing social policies.

Controversial former President Jacob Zuma, who has been expelled from the ANC and is boycotting the new Parliament, was especially harsh. At a press conference on Sunday, he slammed what he called a “return of apartheid and colonialism.”

“There is no government of national unity in South Africa,” he argued. “There is a white-led unholy alliance between the DA and the ANC.”

He was not the only one to think like that over the weekend, as people pondered with a hint of perplexity on what their parties had gained and conceded in the deal. For many of them, the inclusion of the DA in government cast a troubling shadow.

“To see a revolutionary party like the ANC deciding to go with the former enemy – they’ve abandoned the majority of the people,” says tour operator Benjamin Zondo, who lives on the outskirts of Cape Town. While he used to support the ANC, the 30-year-old voted this year for the new party Mr. Zuma had formed, uMkhonto Wesizwe (MK).

Mr. Zondo had watched the National Assembly proceedings on television, even as they continued late into the night. “I would have loved to see the ANC going with MK or the [radical-left] Economic Freedom Fighters, because their ideologies are more similar: to uplift the Black majority and change the system,” he says. “Now the ANC have proven they’re willing to abandon the policies they’ve been pushing for 30 years.”

ANC supporter Rachid Mugerwa, on the other hand, says he was “very happy” with the arrangement. “It has shown another era where people come together,” the businessman says. “Now they won’t be rivals; there won’t be intimidation; they’re going to bring their different visions together.”

The “government of national unity” announced by Mr. Ramaphosa is an overt reference to 1994: After South Africa’s first democratic elections, which the ANC won overwhelmingly, Nelson Mandela formed a government with former apartheid leader F.W. de Klerk to ensure inclusivity in the transition to democracy.

But 30 years later, Mr. Ramaphosa’s attempts at unity won him only 283 votes out of 400 members of Parliament – about 70% of the National Assembly.

“For all practical purposes, this is a coalition” with the ANC, the DA, and the Zulu-led Inkatha Freedom Party, explains political analyst Sandile Swana, who teaches at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. “They call it a government of national unity for cosmetics,” he says.

“It is also an acknowledgement, by both the opposition parties and to a certain extent the ANC, that it lacks capacity to run the country properly,” he says. “The ANC have discredited themselves on virtually every front, so they are coming into this relationship to be rescued. The DA is the big winner here, because this is falling on their lap.”

The day after the coalition announcement, families enjoying a sunny weekend on Cape Town’s seaside promenade welcomed the maturity with which this unprecedented shift had taken place.

“I’m cautiously optimistic,” says Rory Cohen, an accountant walking his dog in the warm afternoon. He hoped the DA’s “competent leadership” and “credible policies” could steer the country in the right direction. “It’s got so much potential – it’s just a case of putting one’s differences aside.”

A little farther down the promenade, a woman named Fay, who asked to be identified by her first name only and described herself as a “grassroots activist” in the fight for democracy, shared a similar sentiment.

“It is a bit of a shock to the system but it holds an opportunity for robust engagement,” she says.

Sharing an ice cream with her husband by the sea, she reflected on her past. “Having survived apartheid, I would never be able to vote for the DA,” she says. “They don’t represent the interests of the majority in this country, because they’re an extension of apartheid.”

But the ANC “needed to be humbled,” she says. “Hopefully, this multiparty character will give the government the robustness the country needs.”

Mr. Swana, the analyst, is more dubious about the prospects of a Cabinet containing a wide range of opposing political views.

“We cannot ignore the history that the first government of national unity [GNU] did not go as well as they say it did,” he points out. Nelson Mandela’s unity Cabinet lasted barely two years, ending with the apartheid-era National Party’s withdrawal in June 1996.

“There is a clear, definite risk that this GNU might be unstable, just like the first one,” says Mr. Swana. “It is not a silver bullet. It’s going to be complicated.”