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Published 6th June 2024

Vol 65 No 12

South Africa

Choices get starker after the ANC vote crash

Copyright © Africa Confidential 2024
Copyright © Africa Confidential 2024

Shorn of a majority, Cyril Ramaphosa must choose between populists or pro-business centrists in a power-sharing deal

After its worst election in 30 years of power, the African National Congress (ANC) saw its vote share tumble to 40.2% and faces choices which will usher in a new era of coalition politics. But these threaten fragile party unity while offering both opportunity and grave danger. A bad choice by President Cyril Ramaphosa could split the ANC again, perhaps terminally. Whatever the choices made before the new parliament sits on 17 June, the risks of more political and economic turmoil are running higher.

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Government’s man subverts the resistance

Sengezo Tshabangu. Pic: @ParliamentZim
Sengezo Tshabangu. Pic: @ParliamentZim

Self-proclaimed leader Tshabangu takes over the opposition in parliament and backs plan to extend Mnangagwa’s presidential term

On 30 May, the Speaker of Parliament, Jacob Mudenda, appointed Sengezo Tshabangu as Leader of the Opposition, in what many are calling the end of opposition politics in...

Debt and drought weigh down economy

Copyright © Africa Confidential 2024
Copyright © Africa Confidential 2024

Finance Minister Musokotwane cuts growth forecasts as worst dry spell in four decades and a weaker kwacha drive up the cost of living

Making significant progress towards restructuring its debts, three-and-a-half years after defaulting on its Eurobonds, Africa’s second-largest copper producer is struggling to contain the fallout from severe droughts, continued...

BLUE LINES
THE INSIDE VIEW

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has invited five African heads of state, as well as AU commission chair Moussa Faki Mahamat, to next week’s G7 summit in Apulia. This meeting comes a week after South Korea’s first Africa Summit at which 48 governments were represented and some US$24 billion in trade and investment was promised.

Diversifying energy supply and migration control are priorities for Meloni, which explains the presence of leaders from Algeria, Egypt and Tun...

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has invited five African heads of state, as well as AU commission chair Moussa Faki Mahamat, to next week’s G7 summit in Apulia. This meeting comes a week after South Korea’s first Africa Summit at which 48 governments were represented and some US$24 billion in trade and investment was promised.

Diversifying energy supply and migration control are priorities for Meloni, which explains the presence of leaders from Algeria, Egypt and Tunisia. Within the context of Meloni’s new ‘Mattei’ plan, we can expect some new offers to Africa.

Kenya’s William Ruto has been campaigning for more ambitious financing and debt restructuring. Ahead of the summit, he has urged G7 leaders to ‘demonstrate solidarity with Africa’ with greater concessional and longer-term development financing. That means agreeing to reallocate the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights reserve currency to the African Development Bank, and committing funds to the World Bank’s International Development Association.

Some of that could bear fruit next week, though talks on debt restructuring are unlikely to be substantive. President Joe Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre says that leaders ‘will also redouble commitments to support developing countries seeking to make investments in their future and to help strengthen food security and health financing.’

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Inching towards the end of the tunnel

After three-and-a-half years of talks and geopolitical clashes, officials in Lusaka foresee a comprehensive debt restructuring within months

At last an end is in sight for Zambia’s tortuous negotiations to restructure US$13.4 billion in foreign loans, after international bondholders met on 4 June to approve the...

Foregone electoral conclusion cements Kaka's grip

A new autocracy takes root after a dubious poll with only subtle changes to the rulership style of the last 30 years visible in the President's picks for the new cabinet

The electoral commission outdid itself in producing the results of the 6 May presidential election in record time. Having set a deadline of 21 May the Agence nationale...

BHP's 'final' bid for Anglo set for election day

With $50 billion on the table, the biggest mining deal in history faces a wall of corporate and political obstacles

Given the stakes in jobs and economic growth, it's fitting that the deadline for the offer by Australia's BHP for Anglo American should fall on 29 May, election...

How Western Cape tested the opposition's coalition strategy

The centre-right Democratic Alliance has controlled the province since 2009 but is facing pushback from smaller parties in its political base

Early reports of a high turnout across the country on 29 May have boosted the ruling African National Congress's hopes that it might retain its national parliamentary majority...

Talon flirts with a third term

Fighting with the Niger junta over oil exports, the President is mulling constitutional changes

Facing the challenges of succession or a high-risk bid for a third term, President Patrice Talon has been buffeted by the junta-versus-civilian-regime rivalries playing out in West Africa....

Abiy keeps Addis on side but alienates the nation

Insurgencies rage in the three largest regions but the Prime Minister has reinforced his grip on the capital

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's political shapeshifting has cost him popular support in the Amhara, Oromia and Tigray regions leaving only those in power in Addis Ababa and the...

Ruto revels in the western embrace

Washington offers military deals and pushes hefty investments as Kenya's President is feted in the US capital

Investment deals worth billions of dollars may have been secured, but geopolitics was the main agenda item during President William Ruto's four-day state visit to the United States...

Pointers

Pitching for De Beers

The Botswana government may be clearing the way to bid for part of Anglo American’s 85% holding in De Beers, which the London-based mining conglomerate plans to divest...

One party in a state

A year ago, the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) had pretensions of establishing a one-party state modelled on Daniel arap Moi’s Kenya African National Union. Instead, it looks more...

Court out of cash

Hamstrung by its member countries refusing to pay their annual contributions, the East African Community is perennially short of cash. On 29 May, the bureau of the East...

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