South Africa's unity government now has five parties, ANC says
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00:00Ventsel joins us now with more. Anne, so this week started with more announcements from the ANC.
00:07So who else is in now? And considering that they had already negotiated enough backing to get
00:14lawmakers to vote Ramaphosa back in on Friday, why is the ANC still chasing allies?
00:20So a large part of this basically looks like it's optics. We have the ANC in the
00:30Government of National Unity, so that's number one, the DA number two, the IFP number three,
00:37the PA announced on Friday basically that they were in, and then now the Good Party
00:44is also in. So that's five. And as you said correctly, 273 seats. So why do they need more
00:52allies? But they themselves saying they are still talking. And some of this largely is optics
00:59because of the coupling with the DA, the natural kind of opposition, the DA seen as being the
01:08party of white power and some of the racist politics that carry over from the former
01:16apartheid government. And of course, the labor laws that they have very publicly been against,
01:25the wage bill, the basic minimum wage. So they're not seen as particularly pro-poor,
01:31which the ANC is, which we have a big problem with poverty. We have a big problem,
01:37big problem, sorry, with unemployment. So how do you then enter into a marriage of convenience,
01:44as Julius Malema of the EFF said, with the party that basically opposes that, does not apologize
01:52for opposing that, and is very vocal about it. So you pull in as many of the other parties as you
01:59can to balance A, how this looks and how this makes the general voting public feel about the
02:06fact that you have now basically joined forces with the enemy, and the enemy from these ideological
02:15standpoints and these bare bones kind of grassroots bread and butter real issues on the
02:22ground. So the ANC then saying, look, it's not just the DA, it's party X and party Y and party
02:31Z and party F and party G, so that you have that whole appearance of we're not just in this with
02:38the DA. So with the DA now no longer being the opposition, what's left? What's happening on the
02:44opposition side? Is it consolidating itself as well? So indeed it is. And again, on Friday,
02:52in fact, in the morning, an hour before the first session of the National Assembly constituting the
03:00new parliament, an hour before, Julius Malema had a press briefing with a number of the other
03:05smaller parties, and they announced that they were starting the Progressive Caucus,
03:10and that the Progressive Caucus was really going to stand against everything that they believe this
03:16new ANC-DA marriage meant. Again, pro-poor, talking about land issues, talking about race
03:26and parity and economics, and all those things that people are really concerned about.
03:32So on the one hand, we have the economics of Joe, every person in South Africa, which is
03:40putting food on the table. And on the other hand, we have the economics of big business.
03:44And this is where the MK has now also announced that they are joining forces with the Progressive
03:51Caucus. They also very strongly stated that they wanted nothing to do with the sellout ANC of
03:59Cyril Ramaphosa, very strongly linking not just the ANC, but the ANC of Cyril Ramaphosa to an ANC
04:07that has moved very far from where it began, and has moved very far from being the ANC of the
04:13people, from being the pro-poor ANC, the ANC that wanted human rights for all, and that wanted to
04:19pay attention to especially the needs of African South Africans, considering where they come from,
04:26from the apartheid era. And of course, we have Jacob Zuma saying, look, we're still
04:32saying the elections were rigged. We are still saying that we raised issues with the IEC that
04:36were not addressed, and raising the fact that the IEC had seven days to finalize the vote,
04:43and could have taken that time to potentially do a recount, but that it chose not to, and saying
04:50that they are being very peaceful, despite narratives to the contrary from their enemies,
04:56the words of Jacob Zuma and the MK party. They're using peaceful protest. They went to the IEC,
05:03they went to the constitutional court, and they boycotted the first session of cabinet,
05:10peaceful protest, and he says they will continue in that manner, despite what anybody thinks.
05:15Anne Wenzel, thank you so much for giving us that breakdown at the start of the week of the shifts
05:21currently underway in South Africa's volatile political landscape, following the ANC losing
05:27its parliamentary majority in last month's vote.