South Africa’s Democratic Alliance (DA) party has said it will only agree to be part of the African National Congress (ANC) proposed government of national unity (GNU) if the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), and Patriotic Alliance (PA) are excluded, reported SABC News.
On Thursday, ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the party was seeking to form a government of national unity with a broad group of parties including EFF, IFP, DA, NFP and PA.
The ANC has laid down stringent conditions under which parties would be included in the pact. Said Ramaphosa:
All parties must commit to shared values, nation building and social cohesion. These values include respect for the constitution of the Republic of SA and the rule of law, social justice and equity, human dignity, non-racialism and non-sexism. These values also include stability, accountability, transparency and good governance.
Agreements between parties who will be involved in this whole process should be in writing, they should be public and they should also be transparent and include measures to hold all participants accountable.
The DA said it hopes to receive details on how the government of national unity will operate in its next meeting with the ANC. DA national spokesperson Werner Horn said:
The President was not very specific in terms of the characteristics of such a government of national unity. We will hopefully get some more detail from them, and then the duty of that negotiating team will be to bring the specifics back to the federal executive.
And on Monday, the Federal Council will have to decide; but even the smallest inclusion of those three parties, well, in terms of the current resolution of the federal executive, it will be very difficult, if not impossible, for us to be included.
The ANC lost its Parliamentary majority for the first time in its 30 years of rule after the end of apartheid in 1994.
The ANC got 40.18% support, with the DA on 21.81% votes, the former president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MK Party) got 14.58%, and EFF got 9.52% votes.
With South Africa’s proportional representation system, the ANC has to combine with one or more other parties to attain more than 50% of the vote to form a government.
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