South Africa: Coalition talks set to start after ANC loses majority
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00:00 In South Africa, after their biggest election defeat in 30 years, the ruling African National
00:05 Congress says it will enter coalition talks to form a new government. With virtually all
00:10 votes counted from Wednesday's poll, the ANC got just over 40 percent of the vote,
00:14 failing to win a majority and dropping about 17 points from its score in the last election.
00:20 Parties must agree to a coalition within 14 days. The ANC's chairman has said they are ready to talk
00:26 to anybody and everybody. For some analysis, I'm joined in the studio by our international
00:31 affairs commentator, Douglas Herbert. Doug, hello. This is a historically low result for the ANC,
00:38 and it turns out youth voters really played a big role. Yeah, and look, there's nothing new and
00:43 flashing in that headline, right? I mean, in elections everywhere, when you have generational
00:47 shifts, new generation coming in, you often have them souring on a party that's either been in
00:52 power a long time, been a dominant party. We've seen it in the United States. We've seen it in
00:58 Russia. We're seeing it in South Africa. So that's not the breaking news here. What is interesting,
01:03 though, is the fact that the big issues we've been talking about this election, why has this
01:08 been happening? What have been the dominant issues? It's been things like soaring unemployment,
01:12 right? High unemployment. South Africa having the highest, not making this up, the highest
01:16 unemployment rate in the world, 33 percent overall. But where it really hits that unemployment number
01:21 and where your eyes start to open is that among the youth, people anywhere from sort of 18 to 49,
01:28 it's 45, just over 45 percent. That's nearly half of the youth population that is unemployed.
01:35 So you can imagine why some of them might be disinclined to go to the polls and vote for the
01:40 same party, no matter what its historic, iconic reputation has been, the party of their parents
01:45 and grandparents, the party of the liberation struggle led by Nelson Mandela. We all remember
01:50 those heroic images from 30 years ago, but they're disinclined because basically their attitude is,
01:55 well, show me the money. What have you done for me lately, A.N.C.? So while it's true that a lot
02:00 of the young generation of voters have grown up in households where they've heard their parents and
02:06 their grandparents telling them, you know, heroic stories and anecdotes about the struggle to break
02:12 free of apartheid and white minority rule, real stories, vividly lived stories by their own,
02:18 by only one generation above them, they themselves saw a mixed bag, right? Some of those voters saw
02:25 the euphoria of those years after 1994. They remember a lot of them, Nelson Mandela. They
02:31 were kids. They were young, perhaps coming into power. They remember how euphoric that time was,
02:36 but they've also felt since then a lot of despair and they've felt a lot of disappointment because,
02:41 like I said at the beginning, they just feel like the A.N.C. has been resting on its laurels,
02:45 hasn't really done anything for them, and they're not ready to just blindly vote for a party on the
02:50 basis of its historic, iconic, albeit storied reputation. So a new generation kind of shifting
02:56 the balance of power then, South Africa now entering this new era of coalition building.
03:01 How hard is that going to be for the A.N.C.? Very tough, extremely tough coalition talks,
03:06 often with bitter rivals. One of the stories of this election is there's been more than a dozen,
03:11 you know, opposition parties, around a dozen, and it's a fragmented political landscape now.
03:17 And when we're talking the types of parties that they're going to have to negotiate with,
03:21 there's a new party formed by the former president who's now amidst, you know,
03:25 still facing corruption allegations, still his legal troubles, Jacob Zuma swirling around him.
03:30 He broke away from the A.N.C., formed a new party named after the A.N.C.'s former paramilitary wing,
03:36 the MK party, which has been doing very well. He says, "Absolutely no way we would even think
03:40 of sitting in a coalition with the A.N.C. unless they ditched the current president,
03:45 Cyril Ramaphosa, who is an anathema to people like Jacob Zuma." So, and A.N.C. in turn saying,
03:51 "There's absolutely no way, as any condition for forming a coalition, that we are going to
03:55 scrap Ramaphosa." Big question mark, you know, is still over his fate. Will they end up scrapping
04:00 him? They say for now, "Absolutely no way." But there are also other parties, some sort of
04:04 considered radical left parties right now, including MK, but also the EFF, it's an economic
04:10 freedom party. These are parties that are way to the left of the A.N.C. And meanwhile, on the other
04:15 side, you have this, the second place party, the Democratic Alliance, with about 22% of the vote.
04:19 It is, you know, a party that's led right now by white minority figures, you know, white-led
04:26 party, seen as very business friendly, seen as to the right of center. And so any choice they
04:33 make for a coalition is going to involve very, very tough concessions. What the A.N.C. is saying,
04:39 while these will be tough talks, what the A.N.C. is very clear in saying is it's trying to send
04:43 the message, "We've heard you. We've gotten the message. We have a lot of work to do to clean up
04:48 our own house right now. We are humbled by this outcome." So they're not trying, they're not in
04:52 denial about it, but that doesn't mean it's going to be easy to form a coalition. They have two
04:56 weeks to do so. The end of those two weeks after the results are declared, two weeks to do so,
05:00 they will have to, the new parliament will sit, and that parliament is the one that's going to
05:04 have to choose a new president. So there is a lot of what-ifs right now hanging above, looming
05:09 above this electoral equation. We'll know in a couple of hours the official results, and then
05:12 it's anyone's guess from there. That's going to be a very interesting two weeks coming up in South
05:16 Africa. Doug, thank you so much for that. That's our international affairs commentator, Douglas
05:20 Herbert.