CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — There is likely to be some conflict between partners in South Africa’s new coalition government, but it will not be “catastrophic” for hopes of getting the country back on track, the leader of the country’s second-largest political party said Thursday.
John Steenhuisen’s Democratic Alliance, against all expectations, joined a coalition government led by the long-ruling African National Congress after the national elections in May, turning fierce opponents from both sides of the South African political spectrum into partners in government.
Analysts predicted it would be a difficult working relationship, with Steenhuisen calling it “a marriage of discomfort” for Africa’s most advanced economy, which is beset by problems of poverty, inequality, unemployment and failing state-owned enterprises.
Steenhuisen said there would likely be many moments of disagreement between his centre-right DA and the left-wing ANC over the next five years of the parliamentary term to end the “deep crisis” in South Africa, and that that would have to be accepted.
“Conflict over policy … is not necessarily an existential threat to government,” Steenhuisen said in a luncheon speech to a predominantly older audience at an upmarket sports club in Cape Town. “There will be conflict. There will be differences in policy.”
The ANC and the DA joined with eight other smaller parties to form what is being called a government of national unity after weeks of difficult negotiations following the May 29 election. The historic agreement was brokered after the long-dominant ANC lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since the end of the apartheid system of racial segregation in 1994, forcing it to find coalition partners to remain in government. It took South Africa into uncharted political waters.
The coalition government was finally formed in late June and faces the challenge of reining in South Africa’s desperate 32% unemployment rate, the highest in the world outside a war zone. South Africa’s economy has barely grown in the past decade and Steenhuisen, the former main opposition leader who is now agriculture minister, said his party’s focus in government would be solely on those issues.
“Economic growth and job creation. Growth and jobs. I and my party will not let anything stand in our way,” he said.
The conflict Steenhuisen referred to between the DA and the ANC could become visible on Friday if President Cyril Ramaphosa, the leader of the ANC, signs an education bill that the DA strongly opposes, as Ramaphosa has said he will do.
Steenhuisen said his party would take the government it is part of to court over the law if Ramaphosa signed it, accusing the ANC of “roughly” rolling over its coalition partners.
The DA is also fiercely opposed to a national health law introduced before the election that will effectively make the government the sole purchaser of health care. Critics, including the DA, say it will wipe out private health care instead of improving public health care. The DA is also determined to challenge it in court, Steenhuisen said, another issue that has the two main parties holding the fate of the coalition at loggerheads.
But Steenhuisen said there is also “a long list” of policies the ANC and DA have agreed on in the 2 1/2 months since the coalition government was formed, particularly around reshaping an economy that is meant to be a leader in Africa and for the broader developing world but which only saw GDP growth of 1.9% in 2022 and 0.6% last year.
Steenhuisen said Ramaphosa and the ANC had “no better ally than the Democratic Alliance” when it came to economic reforms that would create jobs and combat poverty.
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