South Africa’s leftist Economic Freedom Fighters won’t join a government that includes the centrist opposition Democratic Alliance, the party’s deputy leader said.
President Cyril Ramaphosa on Thursday invited the nation’s political parties to join a broad alliance that will rule the country — known as a government of national unity — after elections last week failed to produce an outright winner.
The DA, which espouses free-market principles, emerged as the second-largest party after the ANC in the May 29 ballot, and has previously said it won’t join a government that includes the EFF.
“We do not want to form any part of a government with representatives of the white colonial and apartheid system,” EFF Deputy President Floyd Shivambu told reporters on Friday in Johannesburg. “We’re not going to sit alongside the Democratic Alliance and Freedom Front Plus in government as the Economic Freedom Fighters.”
The rand gained as much as 1.1% as Shivambu spoke and traded 1% stronger at 18.795 per dollar by 2:09 p.m. in Johannesburg.
“We are opposed to the government of national unity in as far as it resembles what was concocted in 1994,” he said. The unity government headed by Nelson Mandela included the National Party, which ruled the country during apartheid, and the IFP. It lasted from 1994 until 1997, when the NP pulled out.
