CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — South African President Cyril Ramaphosa named a new Cabinet late Sunday night, after his African National Congress, the former main opposition party, and nine other parties reached an agreement on the composition of a coalition government after weeks of negotiations.
Ramaphosa’s party retained the bulk of the ministerial positions when he appointed ANC officials to 20 of the 32 ministerial roles in the new coalition. But there were six ministers from the Democratic Alliance, once the main opposition and the ANC’s fiercest critic, and Ramaphosa distributed the remaining ministerial posts among some of the smaller parties.
Ramaphosa’s announcement of his new multi-party cabinet came a month after the ANC lost its three-decade political dominance in Africa’s most industrialized country in national elections, forcing it to seek coalition partners. The ANC’s share of the vote fell to 40% in the May 29 elections and it lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since it came to power at the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule in 1994.
The DA won the second largest share of the vote with 21%.
Others have also joined what the ANC called a government of national unity, open to all 18 parties represented in parliament. Some have refused to participate.
The power-sharing coalition is unprecedented for South Africa. The country briefly had a coalition government at the end of apartheid, but that was under different circumstances. The ANC then had a clear majority across all races after the first elections, but new President Nelson Mandela invited others into his government in an act of reconciliation.
This time, the ANC needed the help of lawmakers from the DA and other parties to re-elect Ramaphosa for a second term.
South Africans left the ANC in historic national elections amid frustration over poverty and some of the highest rates of inequality and unemployment in the world. Ramaphosa said on Sunday that these issues would be priorities for the coalition government.
Although there are eleven parties in the coalition, the ANC and the DA – which were the ruling party and the main opposition party for many years – are the two largest and most important players. Talks between them were tense and protracted and the DA was reportedly on the verge of walking away from a power-sharing deal until a meeting between Ramaphosa and DA leader John Steenhuisen on Friday.
“We have shown that there are no issues that are too difficult or so intractable that they cannot be resolved through dialogue,” Ramaphosa said, noting that the negotiations had been complex.
In some of his key cabinet decisions, Ramaphosa reappointed the ANC’s Paul Mashatile to continue as his vice president. Ramaphosa also appointed the ANC’s Parks Tau as Minister of Trade and Industry, a key portfolio sought by the DA and which has been at the heart of some tensions between the two parties.
DA leader Steenhuisen was appointed Minister of Agriculture, while Ramaphosa also brought the leaders of four other political parties into his cabinet as new ministers.
“We have had to ensure that all parties can participate meaningfully in national governance,” Ramaphosa said.
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