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00:00South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was re-elected for a second term on Friday after
00:06his ANC cobbled together an unprecedented coalition government. Lawmakers voted overwhelmingly
00:13to put Ramaphosa back in office after the general election produced no overall winner.
00:19It marked a turning point for South Africa, ending three decades of dominance by the late
00:24Nelson Mandela's party. Let's listen to Ramaphosa.
00:28Madam Speaker, I want to thank the members of this august house who have voted for me,
00:38who through their vote have invested and placed their trust in me. I intend to work with all
00:48members and indeed to work together with even those who did not vote for me or who
00:57did not find their way clear to vote for me. And this is their democratic right.
01:07Now for more on this story we're joined by our correspondent in Cape Town, Anne Vensel.
01:13Thanks for speaking to us. So what does the country think of all of this?
01:20The country is, I think, there's a small segment of the country that's very happy because they
01:25feel that this is kind of the right call for stability, for possibly economic progress
01:31because remember jobs is still a huge issue in this country. Larger numbers of unemployed
01:37over 50 percent. But there's also a larger feeling of, you know, having sold out, not,
01:45I don't put it this way, we have the ANC who got 40 percent of the vote and the DA who got
01:5222 percent of the vote. So neither one of these actually got a clear shoe in from the from the
01:59voting public. So for them then to come together and say this is the best way possible, a lot of
02:05people are scratching their heads about this. We had Julius Malema who when he made his first
02:12two-minute speech, as the political parties did afterwards, and he said this is a marriage of
02:19convenience. And he says we are basically, they do not agree on this marriage of convenience,
02:25I'm quoting, do not agree on this marriage of convenience to consolidate white power. So this
02:30is a lot of how some people are seeing it because remember the DA is not seen as particularly pro
02:36poor. So this is how it starts from the public side, politically. I mean look the MK was not
02:44in the house, the DA seats. They can still be sworn in later. And the clip you just played
02:51where he talks about some who are not talking to us or somebody who are still talking to,
02:55they could still be in their group. And how are they actually planning to govern
03:00then this coalition given that there will surely be some pretty major compromises?
03:04So I think some of those compromises we've already seen. For example with the vote for
03:11president last night we had a Julius Malema nominated. He is the head of the EFF, Economic
03:20Freedom Fighters, staunchly pro-poor and pro-workers, and also Julius Malema coming
03:26from the ranks of the ANC. He got 44 votes, which I think equals to the seats that they have in the
03:32house. And then, sorry, Cyril Ramaphosa got 283, which shows the backing from the other parties in
03:43the coalition, the DA, the IFP, and so on. But how are they going to go forward? Because this
03:51is kind of the horse trading. So the DA supported Cyril for president, and then the DA got a deputy
03:58speaker elected in turn. The deputy speaker in the house is from the DA. Now this is how it's
04:04going to play out. It's all negotiations. So maybe it's a government of national unified
04:10negotiations. I don't know. But that's what's going to happen. So I think there's going to be
04:14a lot of horse trading. There's going to be a lot of all that backdoor conversations happening
04:18before things get to the public. I think that could make things take longer and raise frustrations.
04:25All right. Anne Wenzel there for us in Cape Town. Thank you very much.