South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa is under growing pressure after leading the ruling African National Congress (ANC) to its worst election result in 30 years, forcing it to share power.<\/p>\n
With almost all the votes in, the ANC is on 40% – down from 58% at the previous election.<\/p>\n
This is lower than the party’s feared worst-case scenario of 45%, analysts say.<\/p>\n
The ANC has always polled above 50% since the country’s first democratic elections in 1994, which saw Nelson Mandela become president.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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But support for the party has been dropping significantly due to anger over high levels of corruption, unemployment and crime.<\/p>\n
Citing the cost-of-living crisis and frequent power-cuts, one woman told the BBC she had voted for the ANC for the past 30 years but had backed the centre-right Democratic Alliance (DA) this time. <\/p>\n
“This result is not good. I wanted it out of government. We need to give someone else a chance,” she said.<\/p>\n
The final results will be announced at 18:00 local time (17:00 BST) on Sunday, the BBC understands.<\/p>\n
The ANC leadership, including President Ramaphosa, is currently discussing the way forward and preparing for complex coalition talks, a source told the BBC.<\/p>\n
Its options are a coalition with the DA, which is in second place on 22%, or the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party led by former President Jacob Zuma, on 15%.<\/p>\n
The radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) is on 9%, so a coalition of those two parties would fall just short of the required 50%.<\/p>\n
The new parliament must be sworn in within two weeks of the final results and the new president would normally be chosen then.<\/p>\n
Both the EFF and MK advocate seizing white-owned land and nationalising the country’s mines – policies which would alarm foreign investors.<\/p>\n
The MK has said it would be prepared to work with the ANC, but not while it was led by Mr Ramaphosa.<\/p>\n
He replaced Mr Zuma as both president and ANC leader following a bitter power struggle in 2018.<\/p>\n
MK supporters have been celebrating overnight in Durban, the biggest city in the party’s heartland of KwaZulu-Natal province. The party was only formed in September.<\/p>\n
ANC chairperson Gwede Mantashe said his party was unlikely to form an alliance with the DA.<\/p>\n
He said there would have to be “policy alignment” between parties to form a coalition agreement.<\/p>\n
For the ANC, its black empowerment policies – aimed at giving black people a stake in the economy following their exclusion during the racist apartheid era – were “non-negotiable”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
EPA<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\nSupport for the DA has grown in this election<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n\n
He added that any coalition partner would have to agree to the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill, which promises universal healthcare for all, signed into law earlier this month. <\/p>\n
The DA opposes both the NHI and the ANC’s black empowerment policies.<\/p>\n
Despite the ANC’s reluctance to align with the DA, its leader John Steenhuisen hasn’t ruled out the idea.<\/p>\n
But if an alliance with the ANC was reached there would be a few non-negotiables, he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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“Respect for the rule of law and the constitution, a social market economy that treats the private sector as partners in the growth agenda. <\/p>\n
“Zero tolerance for corruption and cadre deployment, and an absolute laser-like focus on economic policies that grow jobs.”<\/p>\n
Mr Steenhuisen also told the BBC he would have to consult pre-election coalition partners before considering any negotiations.<\/p>\n
But he ruled out the EFF and the MK party as potential coalition partners. <\/p>\n
“I think instability is not in the best interest of the country. A coalition with the radical left in South Africa of the MK party and the EFF will produce the same policies that destroyed Zimbabwe, destroyed Venezuela,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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A record 70 parties and 11 independents were running, with South Africans voting for a new parliament and nine provincial legislatures.<\/p>\n
The DA has signed a pact with 10 of them, agreeing to form a coalition government if they get enough votes to dislodge the ANC from power.<\/p>\n
But this does not include the EFF or MK, who would be needed to form a majority.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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As the parties scramble to form alliances, Kenya’s former President Uhuru Kenyatta, who is leading the African Union election observer mission in South Africa, offered some advice for forming coalitions.<\/p>\n
He said coalition governments need to focus on areas of agreement instead of differences.<\/p>\n
“I can only wish them well and hope that the leadership will take this decision by the people in a positive frame,” he said.<\/p>\n
Additional reporting by Nomsa Maseko and Anthony Irungu<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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Getty Images\/BBC<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nSource link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"23 minutes ago Farouk Chothia & Catherine Byaruhanga,BBC News, Johannesburg Reuters Cyril Ramaphosa replaced Jacob Zuma as president in 2018 after a bitter power struggle<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":80022,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[169],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}