CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — South Africa’s new coalition government has brought together a black president and white opposition leaders to forge an image of unity in a country where racial segregation was once brutally enforced.
But the power-sharing agreement signed a week ago between President Cyril Ramaphosa’s African National Congress and the Democratic Alliance, one of South Africa’s few white-led parties, has inadvertently reignited racial rifts.
In this photo provided by the South African Government Communications and Information System (GCIS), South African President Cyril Ramaphosa (right) greets opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) leader John Steenhausen (left) during the first parliamentary session since the election, Friday, June 14, 2024, in Cape Town, South Africa. (South African GCIS via The Associated Press)
Many black South Africans have expressed displeasure at the return of a white-led party to power, even in a coalition government. The country is haunted by a white-minority apartheid system that was abolished 30 years ago, but millions of black majority citizens who suffered brutal oppression at the hands of white governments continue to suffer from unresolved poverty and inequality.
South Africa now faces the prospect of more white people in top government positions than at any time since the end of apartheid. White people make up about 7% of the country’s 62 million people.
The ANC liberated South Africa from apartheid in 1994 under the leadership of its first black president, Nelson Mandela. Its three decades of political rule ended in a landmark election on May 29 that forced it to form a coalition government. The DA, which has roots in liberal white parties opposed to apartheid, won the second-highest number of votes.
FILE – Main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) leader John Steenhausen speaks during his final election rally in Benoni, South Africa, May 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe, File)
The two parties have been pushing for the formation of a multi-party coalition government, seeing it as a new form of unity badly needed in a country facing major socio-economic problems.
But history remains. On Thursday, the District Attorney’s Office suspended one of the white members of Congress, just days after he was sworn in, for making racist comments in a social media video more than a decade ago. Reynolds Gauss, then a student in his 20s, reportedly used a particularly derogatory term for black people that was notorious during the apartheid era and is now considered hate speech.
Mr Gouse faces disciplinary action from his party and the South African Human Rights Commission has said it will take him to court, once again putting the district attorney’s office, which has dodged allegations of favouritism towards whites, under renewed scrutiny.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions, a key political ally of the ANC, said Mr Gouse’s outrage showed the DA was “soft on racists” and that the DA “needs to reflect on and address this if it wants to be accepted by ordinary South Africans as a partner in a unity government”, it said.
FILE – Supporters of the main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) party attend their final election rally in Benoni, South Africa, May 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe, File)
DA leader John Steenhausen in a television interview denied allegations that the party only served white interests, saying if that were the case it would not have won the second-highest number of votes in the black-majority country. The DA has black and white councillors and supporters, but its only black leader left the party in 2019 after questioning the party’s commitment to black South Africans.
Political analyst Angelo Fick said the DA had created a “white consciousness” in the eyes of many South Africans, a consciousness created by its “total indifference to the racial concerns of black South Africans”.
Shortly before the Gouse incident, racist comments had come from other quarters, with former president Jacob Zuma’s (and former ANC leader) MK party calling Ramaphosa a “black cattle” for cutting a deal with the DA. Zuma’s party also called the DA chairperson Helen Zille, who is white, Ramaphosa’s “slave master.”
The third and fourth largest parties in parliament, the MK Party and the Economic Freedom Fighters, have refused to join what the ANC calls a “government of national unity for all”, fundamentally because, they say, the DA is committed only to the well-being of South Africa’s white minority.
FILE – John Steenhausen, right, leader of the main opposition Democratic Alliance, shakes hands with ANC chairman Gwede Mantashe, left, after the election during a visit to the Results Processing Centre (ROC) in Midrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, May 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe, File)
“We do not agree to this marriage of convenience that strengthens white monopoly power in the economy,” EFF leader Julius Malema said.
Malema has at times stoked racial tensions in his calls for change, saying “for now, at least, we are not calling for the genocide of white people” and that “white people have had it easy for too long” in South Africa.
He now says his party is not against white people, but against what it sees as “white privilege”, with 64% of black people living in poverty compared to 1% of white people, according to a 2021 report by the South African Human Rights Commission.
Malema represents a new opposition to the ANC by many black South Africans frustrated by race-based inequalities that have become evident after three decades of liberalization. White people generally live in upscale neighborhoods, while millions of blacks live in poor suburbs.
This dissatisfaction has led many voters to abandon the ANC, and concerns about an alliance with the DA could weaken it further.
In his inaugural address on Wednesday, President Ramaphosa acknowledged that “harmful” divisions remain decades after Mandela preached racial reconciliation. “Our societies remain riddled with deep inequalities and extreme polarisation,” he said.
The ANC is seeking to use the coalition as a sort of reboot of Mandela’s ideals.
“For us it doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white,” ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula said of the agreement with the DA, using the words of Mandela to signal South Africa’s openness to all races taking part in the government.
“Fundamentally, the question is how do we move the country forward,” Mbalula said.
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