South Africa Election: ANC Assesses Coalition Options

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.

The highlights this week: Egypt’s decision on reopening the Rafah crossing to Gaza, looming genocide in Sudan’s North Darfur region, and Nigeria’s not-so-new national anthem.

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It’s official: The African National Congress (ANC) party will need to share power for the first time since apartheid ended in 1994 after losing its parliamentary majority in South Africa’s May 29 national election. The historic loss was in part due to former President Jacob Zuma’s 6-month-old uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party eating into ANC support. The ANC received 40.2 percent of votes, down more than 17 percentage points compared with the 57.5 percent it secured in the last national election in 2019. It now holds just 159 seats out of 400 in the National Assembly.

The center-right Democratic Alliance (DA) trailed in second place with 21.8 percent of votes (87 seats). Zuma’s MK gained 14.6 percent of votes (58 seats), becoming the third-biggest party in the National Assembly.

In Zuma’s home province of KwaZulu-Natal, the former president rejected the final tally, claiming vote-rigging, and threatened violence if South Africa’s Electoral Commission declared the results on Sunday as planned. “People would be provoked,” he said, referring to the violent riots that gripped the nation when he was sent to jail in July 2021. “Do not start trouble when there is no trouble.” MK won 45.3 percent of votes in KwaZulu-Natal—just under the 50 percent needed to govern the province outright.

Zuma’s earlier conviction means he is barred from taking a seat in the National Assembly, but he is still able to pull the strings from behind the scenes. “Love him or hate him, Zuma is the most consequential South African politician of his generation,” Sisonke Msimang wrote in Foreign Policy prior to the election. Another ANC splinter group, the radical left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), dropped to fourth place, with a vote share of 9.5 percent (39 seats).

“We suffered heavily, but we are not out,” ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula said at a press conference on Sunday. “We are talking to everybody. There’s nobody we are not going to talk to.” The ANC now needs to form a coalition with one or more opposition parties and began talks on Monday.

The first option that’s popular with investors is a partnership with the pro-business DA. But factions of the ANC are ideologically opposed to the free market agenda promised by the DA. There’s a high potential for political infighting that could weaken any ability to govern cohesively. The DA does not support racial quotas in the workplace—introduced by the ANC—or the new government-funded national health insurance system.

The DA also opposes setting a minimum wage, which it says contributes to unemployment; meanwhile, the ANC believes a minimum wage shelters low-skilled Black workers from extreme poverty.

EFF leader Julius Malema warned the ANC against forming a coalition that would “reinforce white supremacy” and make it a “puppet of a white imperialist agenda”—referring to the DA, which is perceived as serving the interests of minority white South Africans. But the DA has drawn support from Black and mixed-race voters and is seen by most South Africans as governing the best-run province—the Western Cape and its capital, Cape Town.

In turn, DA leader John Steenhuisen has been open to an ANC partnership from the outset knowing that the party was unlikely to reach more than 22 percent of votes. He called an ANC-MK-EFF coalition a “doomsday” scenario.

An alternative to appease dissenting ANC members would be a coalition with the ANC, DA, and Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), which draws its support mainly from ethnic Zulus in KwaZulu-Natal. This would give the three parties 66 percent of the national vote and a commanding majority in South Africa’s most populous province, Gauteng.

A coalition between the ANC and the EFF would intensify great-power competition in the region by further antagonizing the United States. The EFF has suggested nationalizing key institutions and redistributing minority white-owned land without compensation. The two parties currently run the Johannesburg city council together but have had violent clashes running Ekurhuleni, a municipality east of Johannesburg.

The EFF and MK advocate similar economic policies, but an alliance between MK and the ANC is at the moment unlikely due to the souring of relations between Zuma and ANC members. Zuma’s party has demanded that President Cyril Ramaphosa step down before any coalition talks, which ANC members have ruled out.

Coalitions have rarely worked in South Africa. Coalition governments that have previously governed major cities such as Johannesburg and Durban have been unsuccessful, as party rivalries often hampered the delivery of basic services. On a national level, this could affect the ability to swiftly introduce new policies and pass budgets to deal with the country’s immediate problems on the economy, energy, and jobs.

“The lack of ideological cohesion among parties has led to the rise of coalition politics in South Africa,” Ebrahim Fakir wrote in Foreign Policy just before the election. “The result is a governmental environment where oversight and accountability are minimal—and where policy implementation is erratic.”

Leaked ANC documents seen by South Africa’s Daily Maverick suggest the party may opt for a minority government with a more stable supply and confidence agreement struck with the DA and IFP, similar to the parliamentary system currently in place in Canada. The arrangement would mean that the parties agree to back the ANC on key policy votes in exchange for concessions on specific policies.

Regardless, experts suggest Ramaphosa’s time in office could be limited. No ANC president has ever served a full second term. Nelson Mandela chose not to run for a second term, while his successors Thabo Mbeki and Zuma were forced to step down as party leader before their final terms ended. Having presided over such a historic defeat for the ANC, pressure may increase on Ramaphosa to step down before his mandate ends.

Wednesday, June 5: The 2024 Korea-Africa Summit concludes in Seoul.

Thursday, June 6: Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is scheduled to give a State of the Nation address in Parliament.

Thursday, June 13: Tanzanian Finance Minister Mwigulu Nchemba is set to present the 2024-25 budget to Parliament.

Sunday, June 16: South Africa’s coalition deadline.

Rafah crossing. Egypt has said it will not reopen the Rafah crossing to aid unless Israel quits its offensive on the Gaza border. The statement followed a meeting on Sunday of U.S., Egyptian, and Israeli officials. Egypt shut its side of the border in early May after Israel took control of the Rafah side of the border. Israeli troops have also seized the Philadelphi Corridor—a violation of a 1979 peace treaty signed by both nations. Israeli authorities claim they have destroyed Hamas tunnels found in the demilitarized buffer zone running along the Gaza-Egypt border. Egypt denied the existence of such tunnels but has so far not raised formal objections.

“It is difficult for the Rafah crossing to continue operating without a Palestinian administration,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said at a press conference in Madrid on Monday. The same day, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees said forced displacement had pushed more than 1 million people away from the southern city of Rafah.

Tensions have risen between Israel and Egypt over the death of an Egyptian soldier last week during a gunfire exchange. Egyptian authorities say Israeli forces crossed a boundary line while pursuing and killing several Palestinians.

Egypt is set to co-host an emergency conference on Gaza in Jordan on June 11, according to local media reports. Egypt has also said it will join South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

Sudan conflict. About 2.5 million Sudanese could die of hunger and related diseases by September, according to a new report by the Clingendael Institute. The Dutch think tank used data calculations on harvests, wheat imports, and humanitarian aid and based its conclusions on a scenario in which the hungriest people receive only small amounts of extra food.

Fighting has engulfed the North Darfur capital of El Fasher as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces clash with the Darfur Joint Protection Force—made up of non-Arab rebel groups aligned with the Sudanese army—an escalation U.N. experts had warned about since April that has led to widespread human rights abuses and warnings of a looming genocide against the non-Arab Massalit people. Successive cease-fire talks in Jeddah, brokered by the United States and Saudi Arabia, have failed to clinch any lasting deal, as Robbie Gramer reports in Foreign Policy.

Haiti deployment. The arrival of a first contingent of about 200 Kenyan police officers—which was expected to land in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, on May 23 to tackle gang violence—has been postponed after an advance delegation from Kenya identified security concerns and a shortage of equipment and infrastructure. Kenyan President William Ruto told the BBC that the deployment of 2,500 officers drawn from African and Caribbean nations, including 1,000 Kenyan police, will now start in mid-June.

Attempted coup in Congo. Details are still emerging around a failed coup attempt involving at least three U.S. citizens in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on May 19. Around 50 armed men stormed the presidential palace in Kinshasa, spurred on by self-exiled Congolese opposition figure Christian Malanga, who livestreamed the attack on Facebook.

Malanga, who formed the U.S.-registered United Congolese Party, was shot dead by Congolese security forces during the siege. According to Congolese officials, two police officers and one of the attackers were killed in a shootout, and around 50 remain under arrest. Among those arrested was Benjamin Reuben Zalman-Polun, reportedly a 36-year-old cannabis entrepreneur linked to a gold mining venture in Congo with Malanga.

Meanwhile, the family of 21-year-old Tyler Thompson has told several media outlets that they believed he was on an all-expenses-paid vacation around Africa funded by Malanga. “Certainly, the incident made U.S. Ambassador to [Congo] Lucy Tamlyn’s job more difficult,” Michelle Gavin wrote for the Council on Foreign Relations. The bizarre story creates the impression that Americans “so underestimate African states” that they imagine a government can be overthrown “with nothing but fatigues, guns, and a can-do attitude.”

Nigeria has a new national anthem: its old one. A bill to revert to the old anthem, adopted after Nigeria achieved independence from Britain in 1960, was introduced and passed in less than a week by President Bola Tinubu’s government without public consultation. The anthem, “Nigeria, We Hail Thee”—written and composed by two British women—was dropped by the military government of Olusegun Obasanjo in 1978 and replaced by “Arise, O Compatriots,” written by five Nigerians in a national contest to promote patriotism after a brutal civil war.

Back then, Nigerians petitioned against the 1960 anthem, and some claimed that the musicians had plagiarized the lyrics from an English church hymn. Today, Tinubu’s administration suggested the 1978 military anthem lacked a connection with national values. “In a 21st Century Nigeria, the country’s political class found a colonial National Anthem that has pejorative words like ‘Native Land’ and ‘Tribes’ to be admirable enough to foist on our Citizens without their consent,” former Nigerian Education Minister Oby Ezekwesili posted on social media.

Critics argue that the change was a distraction from a nosediving economy that has plagued Tinubu’s first year in office. “How will this stop hunger, banditry, or improve security?” Nigerian lawmaker Ahamad Satomi asked. A strike by Nigerian labor unions over the national minimum wage—currently an unworkable $19 a month—shut down the national power grid, impacting hospitals and disrupting flights on Monday.

China is buying less oil from Africa and instead sourcing its supply from neighboring countries in Asia, as well as the United Arab Emirates, Russia, and the United States, according to a new report from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Angola was China’s second-largest exporter of oil in 2010 but had dropped to eighth place by 2023. Other African nations experiencing turmoil had sharper declines in oil exports to China.

Ruto’s Emirati jet. Kenyan President William Ruto’s use of a private plane to travel to Washington instead of the country’s national airline Kenya Airways has continued to attract domestic criticism. Kenya’s presidency clarified that the Emirati government offered use of the jet for only 10 million Kenyan shillings (about $73,000). In the East African, Aggrey Mutambo and Mawahib Abdallatif report that accepting the offer could damage Kenya’s reputation on regional peacebuilding given the United Arab Emirates’ reported links with Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces and to Ethiopia’s dispute with Somalia over the breakaway region of Somaliland.

Gupta arrest. Ajay Gupta, one of the brothers from the wealthy Gupta family accused in South Africa of having fraudulently profited from their close links with former President Jacob Zuma, was arrested in India on May 24 in an unrelated case, Susan Comrie and Ankit Paliwal report in amaBhungane. According to a police report, Ajay and Anil Gupta were arrested after a local businessman, Satinder Sahni, died by suicide as a result of alleged blackmail by the Guptas. South African authorities are reportedly in talks with Indian police after having unsuccessfully tried to extradite two other Gupta brothers, Atul and Rajesh, who remain in the United Arab Emirates.