South Africa’s new government is making heads explode

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa shakes hands with the newly elected deputy speaker of Parliament, Annelie Lotriet, as John Steenhuisen, the leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance, looks on

That giant whooshing sound you may have heard coming from Africa’s southern tip was a collective sigh of relief. South Africa’s top two political parties — the ruling African National Congress and the longtime opposition Democratic Alliance — managed to put aside their differences to form a national unity government and reelect Cyril Ramaphosa as president

By Keith B. Richburg

Global Opinions contributing columnist. 

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa shakes hands with the newly elected deputy speaker of Parliament, Annelie Lotriet, as John Steenhuisen, the leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance, looks on. (Nic Bothma/Reuters)

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That giant whooshing sound you may have heard coming from Africa’s southern tip was a collective sigh of relief. South Africa’s top two political parties — the ruling African National Congress and the longtime opposition Democratic Alliance — managed to put aside their differences to form a national unity government and reelect Cyril Ramaphosa as president.

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And that popping noise? That would have been the sound of heads exploding among the country’s radical socialists, populists and ethno-nationalists. They can’t countenance the idea of the continent’s most storied Black liberation movement sharing power with the party known as the representative of wealthy White suburbia.

Such a governing alliance seemed unlikely before the May 29 election, which left the ANC shorn of its parliamentary majority and needing a coalition partner to stay in power. But this alliance of the sensible center should allow South Africa to tackle its myriad problems, attract foreign investment and reach its potential as the continent’s economic engine. Stocks and the local currency, the rand, were buoyed by the news.

This governing coalition also avoided what many South Africans feared would be the “nightmare scenario”: an alliance between the ANC and extremists on the fringes. They include former ANC youth leader and firebrand Julius Malema, a red beret-wearing socialist who advocates sweeping nationalization of industry and confiscation of White farmland, as well as corrupt former president Jacob Zuma, whose tenure accelerated South Africa’s downward slide.

Zuma’s new Zulu-centric party, uMkhonto weSizwe, or MK, finished third, mostly on the strength of its support from Zuma’s KwaZulu-Natal heartland. Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters party came in a distant fourth. The two have joined in an opposition alliance with other leftist parties calling themselves the Progressive Caucus. Zuma blasted what he called the “White-led unholy alliance” between the DA and the ANC.

Zuma and Malema can still make trouble in Parliament, but for now they are consigned to the fringes. It must be particularly galling to Malema, a notorious race-baiter who likes to chant “kill the Boer,” meaning kill White farmers, to now sit powerless on the opposition benches while a White woman, Annelie Lotriet of the Democratic Alliance, serves as deputy speaker of Parliament.

You know what they say about karma.