By Nellie Peyton
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – The African National Congress held high-stakes internal talks on Tuesday over which parties it should approach to form South Africa’s next government, with diametrically opposed Marxists and free marketers on the menu of options.
After three decades of dominance since Nelson Mandela swept to power in the landmark 1994 elections that marked the end of apartheid, the ANC lost its majority in last week’s elections. It remains the largest party, but can no longer govern alone.
Voters have punished the former liberation movement for high levels of poverty, unemployment and inequality, rampant crime, constant power cuts and corruption; issues that have held South Africa back and will challenge the next government.
It will have 159 of the 400 seats in the new National Assembly, while the free marketer Democratic Alliance (DA) will have 87 seats, the populist uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) 58, the Marxist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) 39 and the social- democratic party. conservative Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) 17.
The new parliament is due to convene on June 16 and one of its first acts will be to elect the country’s president. As things stand, that seems likely to be incumbent ANC leader Cyril Ramaphosa, although he may come under pressure to resign or prepare for a succession given his poor performance side.
A working committee of 27 ANC officials was due to meet on Tuesday to draw up a menu of options to be presented to the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) on Wednesday.
The Daily Maverick, a South African news website, published details of three internal ANC discussion documents it said it had obtained, outlining scenarios.
According to one of those documents, the preferred option was a trust-and-offer agreement in which the ANC would have executive power, with some positions for the IFP, while the DA would have the upper hand in parliament, with the chair’s seat and powerful committee positions .
In that scenario, the DA and IFP would agree to support the ANC minority government on key votes such as the budget or any confidence motions, in return for policy concessions and involvement in the legislative process.
PARTIES MISCELLANEOUS
According to the document, the next best option was a coalition government that included the ANC, DA and IFP. The document said this would risk alienating some ANC supporters and finding sufficient agreement on policy would be a challenge.
The least good option, according to the document, was a national unity government with a much wider range of parties. It said this would risk instability and collapse, or that one or more parties would withdraw, effectively leaving the ANC in coalition with the EFF and MK parties.
An ANC spokesperson declined to comment on the contents of the Daily Maverick report.
An alliance between the ANC and the EFF or MK is described by the DA as the ‘doomsday scenario’ and would be seen as highly alarming by financial markets and foreign investors.
The EFF, led by Julius Malema, a former leader of the ANC youth wing who broke away from the party, advocates nationalizing mines and banks and confiscating land from white farmers to redistribute it to black farmers.
MK, which has performed surprisingly strongly, especially in Zuma’s home province of KwaZulu-Natal, is also advocating nationalizations and land seizures, as well as scrapping the constitution and introducing a parliamentary chamber made up of traditional rulers.
The party is seen by many analysts as a vehicle for Zuma to take revenge on the ANC, his former party, after he was forced to resign as president in 2018 following a series of corruption scandals. He has since become an implacable enemy of Ramaphosa.
The DA presents itself as a champion of corporate and free market economics and is in favor of scrapping some of the ANC’s key black empowerment measures, which it says have not worked.
Often accused of representing the interests of the privileged white minority, the DA rejects that label and says good governance benefits all South Africans.
All opposition parties have been vitriolic in their criticism of the ANC during the election period and talks between the parties are expected to be very challenging.
(Reporting by Johannesburg bureau; Writing by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
