The election result in South Africa is now official.
The ANC party claimed only 159 out of the 400 seats in parliament, down 71 seats from 2019.
Under the constitution, the newly elected parliament must convene within two weeks of the results being declared, and one of its first acts must be to choose the nation’s next president.
Coalition talks are underway behind closed doors.
Hopefully a deal can be struck between the ANC and the DA: a pivot to the center.
Few analysts expect an ANC-MK tie-up, given the bitter acrimony between them.
The MK on the green phone stands for Mkhonto weSizwe, the corrupt ex-president Zuma’s new party. The DA on the blue phone stands for Democratic Alliance, the party governing Western Cape Province, that came in second in the elections.
[Cartoon by Niel van Vuuren in South Africa’s Beeld newspaper]