The News
JOHANNESBURG — A disputed education bill threatens to destabilize South Africa’s coalition government after sparking the first public row between its biggest parties.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s African National Congress lost its parliamentary majority in the May 29 election, forcing it to form a coalition with nine other parties including the country’s second biggest party, the Democratic Alliance.
Ramaphosa plans to sign the Basic Education Laws Amendment bill into law on Friday. The DA says the move would limit the teaching of pupils in their mother-tongue in a country with 12 official languages. Afrikaans lobby groups, fearing schools teaching in the language could vanish, have sided with the DA.
DA leader John Steenhuisen, the government’s agriculture minister, has called for the bill to be amended. “If the president continues to ride rough-shod over these objections, he is endangering the future of the Government of National Unity, and destroying the good faith on which it was based,” he wrote in a public statement on Wednesday.
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Steenhuisen on Thursday sought to further stress the policy disagreements. The DA would continue to oppose the National Health Insurance (NHI) legislation, signed into law by Ramaphosa on the eve of the May poll, he said at an event in Cape Town.
The DA leader said he would be “delighted” if there was a way to collaboratively address problems his party saw in the NHI plan. “If we can’t, we will pursue the interests of the South African people through every other legal means at our disposal,” he said.
Sam’s view
It’s only natural for signs of conflict to emerge within the coalition. After all, it consists of parties that are fundamentally opposed in terms of ideology and their styles of politics. The apparent disunity could dampen optimism from the elections, which have seen the country’s currency strengthen and the stock market reach record highs.
The parties hold differing views on various issues, including public finance management and universal health coverage.
But the fissures are not yet big enough to tear the coalition government apart. What keeps it together is expedience: the smaller parties relish their newly found access to power.
While tensions over health insurance and now the education bill increase fears of instability, the parties need each other more than they need to be apart. A split simply wouldn’t benefit any of the coalition parties. But one thing is clear — Ramaphosa will need to keep everyone close to minimize public disagreements.
The View From a political risk analyst
Ronak Gopaldas, a director at Cape Town based risk management consultancy Signal Risk, said the ideological differences between the coalition partners were becoming more apparent after a brief honeymoon. “These tensions will continue to resurface periodically, with each party trying to assert its authority and manage perceptions for its base,” he said.
But Gopaldas said he expects the coalition to remain intact at least until the local government elections in 2026 because “falling apart before then would result in mutual destruction and the erosion of public goodwill.”
Room for Disagreement
President Ramaphosa’s spokesman, Vincent Magwenya, on Wednesday told reporters disagreements over legislation were to be expected. “There shouldn’t be any concern that each time there’s a dispute, the entire governance framework of this country will be under threat,” he said.
Magwenya also posted images on X from what he said was a working dinner hosted by the president at his residence in Cape Town with leaders of political parties that are signatories to the coalition deal. In a video, the president and his guests were seen smiling and laughing.