Luanda - Angolan President João Lourenço returned Wednesday afternoon to Angola, after attending the swearing-in ceremony in Pretoria of his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa, who was inaugurated for another five-year term.
On his arrival in Luanda, the Head of State received greetings from the Vice-President of Angola, Esperança da Costa, and members of the Government.
The ceremony, at which Ramaphosa took the oath before the Chief Justice, Raimond Zondo, was also attended by heads of state and government from Botswana, Comoros, the Democratic Republic of Congo, eSwatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Congo.
The ceremony was marked by some demonstrations by the South African National Defense Forces, followed by the oath of allegiance to the Republic and to the Commander-in-Chief, Cyril Ramaphosa.
It also included a 21-gun salute, a flight by the South African Air Force, a parade by a battalion of the National Defense Force and a march past by the various branches of the South African Armed Forces.
On June 14, South Africa's National Assembly (Lower House) re-elected Cyril Ramaphosa as president of the country, despite losing his party’s absolute majority in the May 29 elections.
John Steenhuisen, leader of the main opposition party Democratic Alliance (DA, a center-right liberal party), said hours later in a message to the nation that he had reached an agreement with the President's party for a "government of national unity".
Ramaphosa's party, the historic African National Congress (ANC), won 40.20% of the vote and 159 of the 400 seats in parliament, while the DP, heir to the white political leadership that opposed apartheid, won 21.81% of the vote and 87 seats.
The ANC lost its absolute majority for the first time since the 1994 elections, when Nelson Mandela became the country's first black president putting an end to the segregationist apartheid regime (1948-1994).
After playing an important role in the negotiations that led to the dismantling of apartheid, having been a trade union leader and prospered in the private sector, Cyril Ramaphosa, took up the presidency in 2018 with the promise of putting an end to the corruption that marred the mandate of his predecessor, Jacob Zuma (2009-2018).SC/TED/AMP
