ANC NEC chooses a government of national unity as its preferred path

After emergency post-election deliberations, ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the party would pursue a government of national unity and invite other parties to join. The decision followed the ANC’s loss of its parliamentary majority and the constitutional need for Parliament to elect a president. Forming a broad arrangement required negotiation among parties with sharply different economic and constitutional positions; it did not erase the ANC’s reduced electoral mandate.