South Africa’s president has announced the formation of a new cabinet over a month after elections stripped his African National Congress (ANC) party of its majority.
President Cyril Ramaphosa named 32 ministerial positions of the government of national unity late on Sunday, following weeks of deadlock that delayed the formation of an historic governing coalition.
The announcement sees 20 of the 32 posts going to the ANC. Another six will be filled by the Democratic Alliance (DA) party, with the remainder split among a crowd of smaller coalition parties.
The 71-year-old was forced into the unprecedented power-sharing arrangement with DA and others after his party, a dominant force in South African politics since the end of the apartheid era, lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since 1994 in elections on May 29.
Accustomed to comfortable victories of more than 60 percent, the ANC won just 40 percent of the vote in the May 29 election, as South Africans turned away from the party amid frustration over poverty, poor services, and some of the world’s highest rates of inequality and unemployment. The rival DA took the second-largest share with 21 percent.
Ramaphosa said Sunday that those issues would be priorities for the new government.
“We have shown that there are no problems that are too difficult or too intractable that they cannot be solved through dialogue,” said Ramaphosa.
