Ushering in a new era of unpredictable politics, South Africa's newly elected parliament convened for the first time on Friday as lawmakers prepared to elect the country's next president following last month's general election.
The long-running African National Congress failed to secure an absolute majority for the first time since taking power after the end of apartheid, but was expected to form a tenuous alliance with rival parties, paving the way for Cyril Ramaphosa to be elected president for a second term.
But the two weeks since the election have been tumultuous with negotiations between Ramaphosa's ANC and rival parties.
This process has exposed deep rifts within the ANC and society at large, and in a surprising development, parliament opened without any official announcement of a coalition agreement.
The president's party has ruled with comfortable majorities since the end of apartheid in 1994. But its popularity has plummeted, winning just 40 percent of the vote in the most recent election, reflecting discontent across the continent's largest country, which is struggling with economic stagnation, high unemployment and deep poverty.
Having lost its hold on parliament, the ANC sought to negotiate with the broader range of parties that had seats in parliament in order to form a so-called national unity government that would give all parties a governing role.
The ANC has sought to allay fears among South Africans that the absence of a single dominant party at the national level for the first time in the democratic era could lead to the political chaos that has plagued municipalities under communal leadership.
“The fundamental question is how do we move South Africa forward,” said Fikile Mbalula, a senior ANC leader, on the eve of the newly elected parliament's first meeting. “The majority of our political parties believe that this moment requires us to work together.”
But even before 400 members of parliament gathered at a conference centre on Cape Town's Atlantic coast on Friday, sharp cracks were appearing in the new political landscape.
In a surprise election result, former president and ANC leader Jacob Zuma's Umkhonto weSizwe party boycotted the opening of parliament after winning 58 seats, the third most of any party.
The party, known as MK, performed better than any first-year party in the democratic era, but Mr Zuma claims without evidence that the election was rigged and that his party won far more than the nearly 15 percent of the vote that the Electoral Commission said it received.
MK is demanding that Ramaphosa, who was Zuma's deputy before the two men fell out violently, step down if the ANC wants to be part of a governing coalition – a demand that ANC officials say is impossible to achieve.
India's fourth-largest political party, the Economic Freedom Fighters, which began as a breakaway group from the ANC, also appears to reject calls for a unity government.
The party's leader, Julius Malema, who was the ANC's youth firebrand until he was expelled in 2012, has said he would refuse to join a coalition government that included the second-largest party, the Democratic Alliance, which has mostly white leadership positions and has proposed repealing affirmative action laws and other policies that encourage black business ownership.
“We reject this government,” Malema said, alleging the Democratic Alliance was promoting racist policies and “white supremacy”.
Instead of joining the ANC's unity movement, Malema's party joined forces with five other parties to form what is known as the “Caucus of Progressive Parliamentary Leaders.”
Resistance to the Democratic Alliance, which won about 22 percent of the vote, also came from within the ANC, where some members, as well as trade union and business partners, openly rebelled, claiming that the Alliance was trying to undermine or reverse efforts to end apartheid's deeply rooted racial discrimination.
The backlash has forced ANC leaders to walk a delicate tightrope between selling the idea that an alliance with the Democratic Alliance was a smart move for the country while avoiding alienating the party's base of black voters.
The Democratic Alliance supports free-market capitalism, which some ANC leaders believe will help the economy and attract investors, in contrast to the more aggressive wealth redistribution policies promoted by MK and the Economic Freedom Fighters, such as nationalizing banks and seizing land from white owners without compensation.
The Democratic Alliance was one of the parties most keen to join a unity coalition despite vowing last year never to work with the ANC if it came to power. Its leaders had said during the election campaign that it was important to thwart what they called a “doomsday coalition” between the ANC and the Economic Freedom Fighters.
“We have approached it in a positive and constructive manner, and so have they,” said Tony Leung, who was part of the Democratic Alliance's negotiating team.
To soften the backlash, ANC leaders aligned themselves with the Inkatha Freedom Party, a black-led political party popular among Zulu speakers, the language most widely spoken in South African homes, and touted an alliance with the Democratic Alliance.
