ANC Eyes Coalition Partners

The African National Congress (ANC), South Africa’s ruling political party, will need to enter negotiations after gaining less than 50% of the populace’s vote in the country’s recent national and provincial elections.

After carefully counting the nation’s ballots, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) shared the final results on Sunday, 2 June, concluding South Africa’s seventh democratic general election.

For the first time in 30 years, the ANC has lost its majority vote and is currently sitting at 40.2%, which means they will hold only 159 seats in the 400-member National Assembly of the South African Parliament. President Cyril Ramaphosa has announced that he will accept the will of the people and move forward by working with other parties.

The president may look to partner with two of the major rival parties: the first of which is the Democratic Alliance (DA) which won 87 seats with 21.8% of the vote. Surprisingly, a new party called uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) – led by Ramaphosa’s rival, former president Jacob Zuma – took 58 seats with 14.6% of the ballots.

Either way, the next 15 days will be crucial before the National Assembly sits to elect a new leader of the country.

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