Only an ANC and DA tie-up will work now

At some stage this coming week, President Cyril Ramaphosa is going to have to offer his resignation as head of state and party leader to the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC).

Soon after vote counting began in Wednesday’s national elections it was obvious that Ramaphosa had led the ANC to a catastrophic defeat. He may survive to lead the next government, but he will be in shackles from day one.

The NEC, in turn, should thank Ramaphosa for his offer and turn it down. And then ANC leaders must turn urgently to the business of somehow structuring a government in which, however alien it may feel, the needs of the country are put first. For once the survival of party and country may depend on the same actions.

No one should for a moment doubt that a coalition between the ANC and the EFF would spell the instant collapse of the rand

To briefly restate: Ramaphosa’s ANC has comprehensively lost its majority in the national parliament, been humiliated in KwaZulu-Natal, and it has lost overall control of Gauteng, the Northern Cape and, possibly, Mpumalanga.

The defeats have been visited on it almost entirely by former ANC president Jacob Zuma’s new party, MK, which broke cover last December and is now the third-largest party in the country despite having no leaders and no clear policies. Zuma though, as always crying persecution, turned the elections in Zulu-speaking areas into a referendum on life under Ramaphosa and won hands down.

By late yesterday, with 98% of the vote counted, the ANC was on 40.3% and will probably never win a national majority again. Just 30 years after the official end of apartheid this result marks the actual end of it all. For the last 75 years South Africa has been ruled by one or other large racial nationalist party. 

That is now over, and while it may be uncomfortable it is a good thing. The immediate question is how the ANC remains in government. Parliament will in two weeks elect a speaker, who will preside over the election of a president.

No-one should for a moment doubt that a coalition between the ANC and the EFF would spell the instant collapse of the rand, a rapid ascent in the cost of our debt and a comprehensive collapse in investor confidence. In effect, the economy would quickly grind to a halt.

I don’t think this ANC, however wounded, has the stomach for a coalition with the EFF. The same would apply to Zuma’s MK, even though it is clear Zuma accounts for all of the ANC losses. Investors don’t trust Zuma, who will rule MK from his home at Nkandla. The ANC is a middle-class movement and at its core it worries about mortgages and debt and schools and healthcare.

Which should, properly, lead it to talk seriously to the DA about a coalition. For the country it would be easily the best outcome. The two biggest parties not so much uniting as collaborating to right a shaken South Africa would settle the economy, encourage investment and begin to make a real dent in unemployment and poverty.

Sadly, this may not happen. Not that way at least. But the DA could still do the country a service by keeping Ramaphosa in office as head of a minority government. That means supporting his election as president and protecting him against moves to dislodge him.

In return, the DA would negotiate critical positions in parliament, perhaps even the speakership and the chairs of key portfolio committees, introducing real accountability where, until now, the government has been able to rule with near impunity.

The DA kept control of the Western Cape but it had a poor election, winning just 21.8% of the national vote, measurably below Helen Zille’s record 22.2% in 2014, despite the economic mess the country is in. The DA got some of its conservative base back but that’s all it got.

Zille, though, will be feeling a lot better today than EFF leader Julius Malema, who saw his vote slump, and ActionSA’s Herman Mashaba, who barely made it into parliament. Someone though had better find a way to live with Gayton McKenzie, whose PA came from nowhere five years ago to become the sixth-biggest party in the country like it or not, a force to be reckoned with.