CAPE TOWN: South African lawmakers on Wednesday re-elected Cyril Ramaphosa as the nation’s president, two weeks after the ruling ANC party returned to power in legislative elections.

Ramaphosa was “duly elected president of the Republic of South Africa,” chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng told parliament. Ramaphosa was the only name nominated by lawmakers in Cape Town.

MPs from the African National Congress, which won 230 out of 400 seats on May 8, choose the head of state in the parliament’s first post-election sitting.

The ANC won the ballot with 57.5 percent of the vote, its thinnest majority since the end of apartheid.

Ramaphosa will be sworn in on Saturday and is expected to name a deputy president and cabinet at the weekend.

Under South Africa’s 1996 constitution, electors vote for a party, and the party selects individuals who go to the National Assembly, which then chooses the head of state.

Ramaphosa, 66, is a trade unionist who played a prominent part in the struggle against white minority rule before becoming a successful businessman after the end of apartheid. He will serve his first full five-year term since taking over last year from Jacob Zuma who was forced out over a series of corruption scandals.

“We have been given a responsibility to revive our economy, to rebuild our institutions and to restore hope,” Ramaphosa told parliament. “This administration is about change and you are going to see the change.” His first test as he starts his new term will be his choice of a cabinet — a task beset by rival factions within the ANC.

Prospects of a major reshuffle were heightened when Deputy President David Mabuza announced he would defer taking his oath as a lawmaker.

An ANC integrity commission report has alleged Mabuza — the party’s No. 2 — “prejudiced the integrity of the ANC and brought the organisation into disrepute”.

Seen as a pro-Zuma figure, his name has repeatedly come up in media reports into corruption and political killings when he was premier of the eastern Mpumalanga province. He later became the ANC’s vice president in December 2017 when Ramaphosa was elected party leader.

Published in Dawn, May 23rd, 2019